Systems and methods for presenting targeted metadata in display constrained environments

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are described for presenting targeted metadata associated with media asset identifiers. For example, based on stored user preferences (e.g., the user likes a particular actor) and context (e.g., whether an actor is trending on social media near the user&#39;s location), the systems and methods may rank attributes associated with the media asset (e.g., title, actors, director, genre, etc.). The systems and methods may then determine a number of attributes that can be displayed based on a size of the media asset identifier (e.g., a cell in a grid-guide) and select the number of attributes that can be displayed (e.g., based on the number of characters, the top two ranked attributes are selected). The systems and methods then display the media asset identifier (e.g., the cell in the grid-guide) with the selected attributes.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/492,468, filed Apr. 20, 2017, currently allowed, the disclosure ofwhich is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Given the plethora of media content available to consumers, it can bedifficult to navigate listings for the media content and determine whatto consume. Specifically, conventional systems typically include thetitle of the media content in a listing and little other identifyinginformation. Instead, conventional systems require a user to select thelisting to obtain more information. In this approach, a user may have toselect many different listings (e.g., by pressing an “INFO” key on aremote control), since the title alone is not enough information for theuser to determine if he or she wants to consume the media content. Toaddress this problem, some conventional systems allow a user to selectparticular fields (e.g., title) for inclusion in a guide. However, thisapproach is consistently applied for all media assets, and many usersmay still want additional information to determine what media content toconsume, as well as targeted information based on more than just theuser's own preferences.

SUMMARY

Accordingly, systems and methods are described herein for presentingtargeted metadata associated with media asset identifiers. For example,based on stored user preferences (e.g., the user likes a particularactor) and context (e.g., whether an actor is trending on social medianear the user's location), the systems and methods may rank attributesassociated with the media asset (e.g., title, actors, director, genre,etc.). The systems and methods may then determine a number of attributesthat can be displayed based on a size of the media asset identifier(e.g., a cell in a grid-guide). The systems and methods may then selectthe number of attributes that can be displayed based on the ranking(e.g., if two attributes can fit in a cell of a grid-guide, then the toptwo ranked attributes may be selected). The systems and methods thendisplay the media asset identifier (e.g., the cell in the grid-guide)with the selected attributes.

In some aspects, a media guidance application may retrieve a pluralityof attributes associated with a media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve the plurality of attributes from localstorage or a remote server (e.g., from a media guidance database). Forexample, the media guidance application may transmit a query includingan identifier of the media asset to a database including a plurality ofattributes associated with media assets. Based on the transmitted query,the media guidance application may receive the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset (e.g., in a list or other datastructure). As a specific example, the database may contain a pluralityof tables, where each table is associated with a media asset, and eachrow of each table contains an attribute associated with the media asset.The row may also include a type of each attribute in another associatedfield (e.g., “actor”). The identifier of the media asset may be anycombination of characters that are unique to the media asset. Forexample, the identifier may be the title of the media asset, or a numberassigned by a content provider.

The media guidance application may generate a score for each attributeof the plurality of attributes. For example, the media guidanceapplication may assign a numerical value to each attribute of theplurality of attributes indicating how relevant the attribute is to theuser given the user's preferences and context of the attribute.Specifically, when generating the score, the media guidance applicationmay determine, based on a current time and a location of a user, acontext for each attribute. For example, the context may be any one orcombination of the current season (e.g., Christmas time), the currenttime (e.g., afternoon), the user's location (e.g., Ohio). For example,the media guidance application may determine the current time based on acurrent clock time. The media guidance application may determine thelocation based on GPS coordinates of a device of the user and/or basedon entry of the location by the user. For example, the media guidanceapplication may prompt the user to enter his or her current location viaa user input device. The media guidance application may then compare thedetermined location and current time to a data structure that mapsattributes and/or attribute types to current times and/or locations. Forexample, the data structure may be a table where each row contains arange of times and/or locations that correspond to a given context. Forexample, the context “Christmas” may correspond to December 1^(st) to30^(th) in North America and Europe. The data structure may, for eachcontext, include an indication of which types of attributes (e.g.,genre, actor, etc.) or specific attributes (e.g., “Christmas movie”)correspond to the context. Thus, if a particular attribute associatedwith a media asset is that the media asset is a “Christmas movie,” thecontext “Christmas” may be assigned if the time determined was December10^(th) and the location was Ohio. The media guidance application maygenerate a list or other data structure with a plurality of fields forthe plurality of attributes each with associated fields for the context.For example, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptthat iteratively writes a context to each field associated with eachattribute (e.g., by determining whether the current time and/or locationare associated with an attribute as discussed above).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may transmit, to asocial media website, the current time and location. For example, themedia guidance application may transmit a data packet including a datastructure with the value for the current time (e.g., an integer orseries of integers) and location (e.g., GPS coordinate or a string oftext identifying the location such as “Ohio”). The social media websitemay contain a data structure with currently relevant (e.g., “trending”)topics. For example, the topics may be relevant because they are thetopics that the most people in a given location at a given time areposting about. The media guidance application may receive, from thesocial media website, a data structure including a plurality of topicsat the current time and the location. For example, the media guidanceapplication may receive a table with a plurality of entries, eachassociated with a topic that is currently relevant at the current timeand the location of the user. As an example, the user may be located inNew York City and it may be New Year's Eve. The media guidanceapplication may receive, from the social media website, a table withentries for topics such as “Ball drop,” “NYE 2016,” “Resolutions,” etc.The entries in the table may include the text that summarizes the topic(e.g., the word “Resolutions” appears in many posts) and/or may be basedon tags, such as hashtags (e.g., # resolutions).

The media guidance application may then compare each attribute to eachtopic of the plurality of topics received from the social media website.For example, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptutilizing a for-loop and retrieve the value (e.g., the string ofcharacters defining each topic) from the table received from the socialmedia website. The media guidance application may compare the charactersof each retrieved topic with characters of each attribute to determinewhether a given attribute is relevant (e.g., trending). The mediaguidance application may identify, based on the comparison, that a firstsubset of the plurality of attributes associated with the media asseteach correspond to a respective topic of the plurality of topics. Forexample, the media guidance application may identify a subset of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset that docorrespond to topics in the table received from the social mediawebsite. For example, many users in New York City may be posting about“New York Knicks” and “Amy Schumer,” and the table received from thesocial media website may contain entries for those two topics. The mediaguidance application may determine that the “New York Knicks” and “AmySchumer” match attributes associated with the movie “Trainwreck” forwhich a media asset identifier is to be displayed. The media guidanceapplication may determine the context for each attribute in the firstsubset based on the corresponding topic of the plurality of topics. Forexample, the context may be that the topic matches the exact text of theattribute (e.g., “Amy Schumer”). As another example, the topic may notmatch the text of the attribute, but may match a category or otherwisebe associated with the attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that a topic in the data structure receivedfrom the media guidance application is “sports,” which is related to butnot equivalent to “New York Knicks.” The media guidance application maydetermine that the attribute is related to a topic based on a storedrule-set. For example, for the location “New York,” the media guidanceapplication may access a “New York” database that includes categories(e.g., sports) and teams (e.g., “Knicks”), locations (“Madison SquareGarden”) etc. associated with the category to determine that anattribute is related to a topic.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare thecurrent time and the location of the user to a plurality of currenttimes and locations stored in a database. For example, the mediaguidance application may access the database locally in storage or at aremote server. The database may be structured as a table where each rowin the table includes fields with a time or range of times and locationor range of locations and corresponding fields with context mappings.For example, from October 20^(th) to October 31^(st) in North Americamay correspond to context mapping, “Halloween.” The media guidanceapplication may determine that the current time and location of the usermatches a stored time and a stored location in the database. Forexample, the media guidance application may compare the values for thecurrent time and the location of the user to values stored in thedatabase to determine a match. The media guidance application may thenretrieve, from a field associated with the matched stored time and thematched stored location, a context mapping for attributes. For example,the media guidance application may determine that a user in “Ohio” onOctober 27^(th) fulfills both criterions to be considered in the“Halloween” context mapping and retrieves an identifier (e.g.,“Halloween”) from the field associated with the context mapping.

The media guidance application may then process each attribute of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset with the contextmapping for attributes. For example, the media guidance application mayaccess another database or another row in the same database (e.g.,linked via a pointer) which includes attributes that the context mappingis applicable to. For example, the “Halloween” context mapping may berelevant to attributes, “ghost movie,” “scary movie,” “Dracula,” etc.The media guidance application may then process the attributesassociated with the media asset to determine whether they match theattributes identified as relating to the context mapping. For example, amovie with an attribute “Dracula” may match one of the attributesassociated with the “Halloween” context mapping. Thus, the mediaguidance application may assign the attribute a context (e.g.,“Halloween movie near Halloween”) which may result in a higher rankingfor the attribute (e.g., Dracula) than at other times of the year. Themedia guidance application may process the context to determine acontext value (e.g., which can be used to rank the attributes), asdescribed further below.

The media guidance application may, when generating the score,determine, from a user profile associated with the user, a userpreference for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve a user profile associated with the user fromlocal storage or from a remote server. The media guidance applicationmay then retrieve stored characteristics and preferences of the userfrom the user profile. For example, the media guidance application mayretrieve a viewing history of the user and determine common attributes(e.g., indicating that the user has a preference for the attribute). Asa specific example, the media guidance application may determine from aviewing history for the user that the user has watched seven movies with“Seth Rogen,” and thus the user has a preference for Seth Rogen movies.The media guidance application may analyze a threshold amount of time(e.g., one month) from the current time. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that over the past week the user has viewedmultiple movies of the “action” genre. The media guidance applicationmay determine that an attribute is a common attribute if the attributeappears a threshold number of times in the user's viewing history (e.g.,four times). The media guidance application may determine a preferencefrom an explicit indication from the user (e.g., a stored list ofattributes the user likes). For example, the media guidance applicationmay store a list of attributes (e.g., actors) that the user hasindicated that they like. Alternatively or additionally, the mediaguidance application may store a relative amount that the user likes agiven attribute (e.g., 10/10). The media guidance application maygenerate for display a graphical user interface allowing the user toinput (e.g., via a user input interface) attributes that the user isinterested in (e.g., the user may input, “Seth Rogen” via a keyboard).The media guidance application may generate a list or other datastructure with a plurality of fields for the plurality of attributeseach with associated fields for the user preference. For example, themedia guidance application may execute a program script that iterativelywrites a context to each field associated with each attribute (e.g., bydetermining whether any user preferences are associated with theattribute as discussed above).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve theuser profile. For example, the media guidance application may retrievethe user profile from local storage or a remote server (e.g., via acommunications network). The user profile may be any suitable datastructure for storing preferences and data relating to the user. Forexample the user profile may be a table or series of tables (e.g.,linked via pointers). The media guidance application may retrieve userpreferences for the user from the user profile. For example, the mediaguidance application may execute an SQL script (e.g., utilizing the“Select” statement) to retrieve data from particular fields in the userprofile. The media guidance application may compare each attribute toeach user preference of the user preferences. For example, the mediaguidance application may compare each retrieved user preference witheach attribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the mediaasset. For example, the media guidance application may compare thecharacters of the user preference and the characters of a particularattribute to determine whether they match. As a specific example, themedia guidance application may determine that a user preference for theactor, “Tom Hanks” matches an attribute “Tom Hanks” associated with themedia asset “Forrest Gump.” The media guidance application may identify,based on comparing each attribute to each user preference of the userpreferences, that a second subset of the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset each correspond to a respective userpreference of the user preferences. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine the subset of the plurality of attributes thatmatch a user preference stored in the user profile. The media guidanceapplication may then determine the user preference for each attribute inthe second subset based on the corresponding user preference of the userpreferences. For example, the media guidance application may generate alist or other data structure including an identifier of each attributeof the second subset and an indication that the attribute matched a userpreference. In some embodiments, the media guidance application mayadditionally store a type of user preference matched (e.g., based on aviewing history or a user favorite actors list etc.).

The media guidance application may, when generating the score, assignboth (1) a context value to each attribute based on the context and (2)a user weighting to each attribute based on the user preference. Forexample, the media guidance application may retrieve a list or otherdata structure with a plurality of fields for the plurality ofattributes each with associated fields for the context and the userpreference. The media guidance application may process the list or otherdata structure (e.g., by reading in strings of text or valuescorresponding to the context and the user preference for eachattribute). The media guidance application may then assign a contextvalue based on an algorithm mapping the context value and the userweighting for each attribute to a numerical score. For example, if thetime is December 10^(th), which corresponds to a context of Christmastime and an attribute of a media asset is that it is a “Christmasmovie,” the media guidance application may assign a higher score to the“Christmas movie” attribute than it would at a different time of year(e.g., Summer). The media guidance application may similarly assign auser weighting based on the user preference. For example, the mediaguidance application may assign a greater user weighting to an attribute(e.g., “Seth Rogen”) that matches a user preference than one that doesnot. For example, the exact value of the user weighting may depend on arelative amount that the user likes the attribute (e.g., a stored userpreference for an attribute of 5/10 may correspond to a lower weightingthan 8/10). As another example, the exact value of the user weightingmay depend on the number of times a user has viewed media assetsassociated with the attribute (e.g., if a user has watched two movieswith “Seth Rogen” the weighting may be lower than if the user haswatched ten movies with “Seth Rogen”). The media guidance applicationmay assign the context value and/or the user weighting based on arule-set mapping contexts and/or user weightings to particular values.In some embodiments, the values may be positive or negative and maycorrespond to adjustments from default values for the attributes, asdiscussed further below.

The media guidance application may, when generating the score, calculatethe score based on the context value for each attribute and the userweighting for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may combine the user weighting and the context value togenerate a single composite score for each attribute. As a specificexample, if the scores are based on a ten point scale, and the contextvalue is 4 and the user weighting is 4, the media guidance applicationmay calculate a value of 8. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication adjusts default values (e.g., which may be set to the samevalue, or set to specific values that are different for each attribute)based on the calculated score. For example, if the default score is 5and the media guidance application determines that the context value is−1 and the user weighting is +3 for a given attribute, the mediaguidance application may calculate a score of 7 for the attribute.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate thescore by adjusting default scores for attributes. Specifically, themedia guidance application may retrieve a data structure with defaultscores for the plurality of attributes associated with the media asset.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the datastructure from local storage or from a remote server. The default valuesmay be generated by a human. For example, a human metadata editor mayassign values for media assets based on the content in the media asset.For example, the human editor may assign a value of 9 out of 10 to title“The Red Wedding” and a value of 3 out of 10 to actor “Kit Harrington”for a particular episode of Game of Thrones where the title isparticularly well-known and/or important. The default values may also begenerated based on an automated process. For example, based on queryinga media aggregator for social media posts, news stories, and otherpublished content identifying a particular media asset, the defaultvalues may be generated based on the number of times particularattributes are mentioned in connection with the media asset. The mediaguidance application may retrieve, from a field corresponding to eachattribute of the plurality of attributes, a default score for eachattribute. For example, the media guidance application may execute adatabase query language script, such as an SQL script, to retrieve avalue (e.g., 4) for the default score for a particular attribute. Themedia guidance application may then adjust the default score for eachattribute based on the context value and the user weighting. Forexample, the media guidance application may retrieve a default value(e.g., 4) for a given attribute. The media guidance application, asdiscussed above, may determine values to adjust the default value basedon the context and the user preference (e.g., the context value and theuser weighting). For example, the media guidance application maydetermine that the user has a negative preference for the attribute(e.g., the user does not care about the attribute) and a value of −2 isassigned, but the context value is high (e.g., 5) because a famous actorassociated with the media asset has just won a major award. In thisexample, the media guidance application would calculate a score of 7 forthe attribute (e.g., it may move up in the ranking of attributesdiscussed below).

The media guidance application may rank the plurality of attributesbased on the score for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may store the calculated score for each attribute as well asan identifier of each attribute in a data structure. The data structuremay be a list, array, or other data structure suitable for storing thecalculated scores for each attribute. The media guidance application maythen sort and order the attributes based on their associated scores. Forexample, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptutilizing a bubble sort, merge sort, or other suitable sorting algorithmto order the attributes from highest score to lowest score.

The media guidance application may determine a display size of a mediaasset identifier associated with the media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that a media asset identifier thatwill be generated for display will be of given dimensions (e.g., pixeldimensions). The media guidance application may determine the dimensionsof the media asset identifier from a display template, as describedfurther below.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a userinput corresponding to a request to generate a display with the mediaasset identifier. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive a user input (e.g., a “GUIDE” button on a remote control). Themedia guidance application may determine that the input corresponds topresenting a display screen (e.g., a grid-guide display withtime-channel listings of media assets) to the user. The media guidanceapplication may determine the particular media asset identifiers thatneed to be displayed (e.g., the default screen of the grid-guide may beto show channels 1-4 and media assets available over the next threehours from each channel) and query a media guidance data source todetermine the particular media assets where information should bedisplayed as media asset identifiers. The media guidance application mayretrieve a display template that corresponds to the user request,wherein the display template includes a plurality of display sizesassociated with objects to be displayed. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve, either locally from storage or remotely from aserver via a communications network, the display template. The displaytemplate may be any suitable data structure, such as a class or a table,which contains parameters for displaying media asset identifiers. Thedisplay template may contain a plurality of display sizes (e.g., pixeldimensions) for different locations where media asset identifiers willbe displayed. The plurality of display sizes may further be associatedwith particular objects to be displayed. For example, a display size maybe associated with a parameter for the length of the program.Specifically, a one hour long media asset may correspond to a differentdisplay object stored in the display template (and hence differentdisplay dimensions) than a two hour long media asset.

The media guidance application may determine that the media assetidentifier associated with the media asset corresponds to a first objectto be displayed. For example, the media guidance application maydetermine that the media asset is a one hour long media asset andcorresponds to the one hour long object in the display template, whichhas an associated set of display dimensions. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve, from the display template, the display sizeassociated with the first object to be displayed. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve a stored value or values (e.g., aninteger) for the display dimensions associated with the first objectthat matches the characteristics of the media asset.

The media guidance application may, based on the display size, determinea number of characters that fit in a display area. For example, themedia guidance application may retrieve from a field of a displaytemplate corresponding to a display to be displayed (e.g., a grid-guide)that a particular object (e.g., a cell) corresponding to the media assetidentifier can fit a particular number of characters (e.g., 100characters). Alternatively or additionally, the media guidanceapplication may determine the number of characters based on a font type(e.g., Times New Roman) to be displayed with the media asset identifier.For example, the media guidance application may access a database thatstores adjustments to a stored number of default characters stored inthe field of the display template (e.g., 100 characters). For example,the media guidance application may determine that a particular font typeis 10% smaller, so 10% more characters can fit in the display area.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine thenumber of characters that fit in the display area based on a font typeto be displayed. Specifically, the media guidance application maydetermine a font type to be displayed in the display area. For example,the media guidance application may retrieve, from a stored field in adisplay template (e.g., as described above) an identifier of a fonttype. The identifier may be a string of characters (e.g., “Times”)and/or any other identifier (e.g., a combination of alphanumericcharacters) that can be matched to characteristics of the appropriatefont type. The media guidance application may retrieve an averagecharacter size for the font type. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve the average character size from a datastructure storing values for the average character size (e.g.,approximately as a rectangle and in pixel dimensions such as 20×30),where each average value is associated with the identifier of the fonttype. The media guidance application may then compare the averagecharacter size to the display size of the media asset identifier. Forexample, the media guidance application may calculate, based on theaverage dimensions of the character of the font type (e.g., 20 pixels inheight, 30 pixels in width), how many characters fit in the displaydimensions. As a specific example, the media guidance application mayretrieve values (e.g., from a display template) indicating that a givenmedia asset identifier is 50 pixels in height and 900 pixels in widthand compare those values to corresponding values for the dimensions ofan average character of a given font type. The media guidanceapplication may, based on comparing the average character size to thedisplay size, determine the number of characters that fit in the displayarea. For example, the media guidance application may determine (e.g.,by dividing the corresponding dimensions of an average character) thattwo rows, each with 30 characters can fit in the display. Thus, themedia guidance application may determine that 60 total characters canfit in the display.

The media guidance application may select, based on the ranking, a setof attributes from the plurality of attributes, wherein the total numberof characters in the set does not exceed the determined number ofcharacters that fit in the display area. For example, the media guidanceapplication may initialize a counter for the number of characters ofattributes that are currently selected and increment the counter basedon the number of characters in each attribute that is selected. As aspecific example, the media guidance application may select the highestranked attribute, which may have 30 characters, and set the counter to30. The media guidance application may then select the next highestrated attribute and update the counter by adding the number ofcharacters of the next highest rated attribute and so on until thecounter exceeds the determined number of characters that fit in thedisplay area. For example, once the media guidance applicationdetermines that an nth retrieved attribute exceeds the determined numberof characters that fit in the display area, the media guidanceapplication may determine that the nth-1 retrieved attribute is the lastattribute that fits in the display area.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may maximize thenumber of attributes the user finds interesting that are displayed. Forexample, even though the episode title of a media asset is the highestranked attribute, the media guidance application may determine thatbecause it is a large number of characters, the user would prefer to seeattributes (e.g., genre and lead actor) that are ranked two and threesince the user's interest in those two attributes combined is greaterthan the interest in the top ranked attribute alone. Specifically, themedia guidance application may retrieve, from the user profile, a userdisplay rating for each attribute type of a plurality of attributetypes. For example, the media guidance application may store a datastructure including a plurality of types of attributes (e.g., genre,actor, year, etc.) and a rating (e.g., on a scale of 1-10) in anassociated field with each attribute type. The media guidanceapplication may then maximize a total user display rating of attributesthat are displayed. Specifically, the media guidance application maydetermine an attribute type for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes associated with the media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine an attribute type of each attributeof the plurality of attributes from a field associated with eachattribute. For example, the plurality of attributes for the media assetmay be organized in a table where each row contains an attribute (e.g.,“Tom Cruise”) and an associated field for the attribute type (e.g.,“actor”). Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance applicationmay determine the attribute type of an attribute by querying a mediaguidance data source to determine the type of the attribute. Forexample, the media guidance application may transmit a data packetcontaining the attribute, which may be compared to entries in a databaseat the media guidance data source mapping attributes to attribute types.The media guidance application may then compare the attribute type ofthe attribute to stored attribute types in the data structure with therating for the attribute type.

The media guidance application may then determine a user display ratingfor each attribute of the plurality of attributes based on therespective attribute type. For example, the media guidance applicationmay determine the user rating for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes associated with the media asset based on the type of eachattribute. For example, the media guidance application may determinethat “Tom Cruise” is an “actor” which corresponds to a user displayrating of 5, and that “action” is a “genre” which corresponds to a userdisplay rating of 2. The media guidance application may identifyattributes of the plurality of attributes that maximize the total userdisplay rating by processing the ranked plurality of attributes with amodel including both (1) the user display rating and (2) a number ofcharacters of each attribute of the plurality of attributes. Forexample, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptthat reads in the number of characters of each attribute and the userdisplay rating associated with each attribute in order to maximize theuser display rating of the set of attributes displayed. For example, thetop three ranked attributes may have 80, 20, and 30 characters,respectively. The top three ranked attributes may also have user displayratings of 7, 5, and 4 respectively. In this example, the program scriptexecuted by the media guidance application may return that theattributes ranked second and third should be presented in a display areathat has a maximum of 80 characters because the display rating of 9 isgreater than the display rating of 7 (e.g., if only the top rankedattribute is presented, since due to its length it is the only attributethat could be presented). The media guidance application may select theidentifier attributes as the set of attributes. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that attributes that maximize theuser display rating should be generated for display with the media assetand store the attributes as the set of attributes.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may adjust the fontof text displayed with a media asset identifier such that attributeswith similar scores can both be displayed. Specifically, the mediaguidance application may determine, based on a number of characters of afirst attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes, that the firstattribute will be displayed. For example, the media guidance applicationmay determine that there is space (e.g., there are enough charactersavailable in the display area) to display the first attribute. As aspecific example, the media guidance application may determine the firstattribute can be displayed if the first attribute is 40 characters andthe number of characters available in the display area is 50. The mediaguidance application may then determine, based on a number of charactersof a second attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes, that thesecond attribute will not be displayed. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that there is no space (e.g., there are notenough characters available in the display area) to display the secondattribute. As a specific example, the media guidance application maydetermine that, since the first attribute will be displayed and is 40characters and the number of characters available in the display area isnow 10. If the number of characters of the second attribute is greaterthan 10, the media guidance application may determine that the secondattribute cannot be displayed in the display area (e.g., because itwon't fit).

The media guidance application may calculate a difference between afirst score of the first attribute and a second score of the secondattribute. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve thescores of each attribute from a data structure with attributes andassociated scores calculated (e.g., as described above). As a specificexample, the media guidance application may retrieve that the score forthe first attribute is 7.8 and the second attribute is 7.7 and maycalculate a difference of 0.1 between the scores of the two attributes.The media guidance application may determine whether the difference isbelow a threshold difference. For example, the media guidanceapplication may compare the difference between the scores of twoattributes (e.g., 0.1) to a threshold amount (e.g., 0.3) to determinewhether the two attributes are substantially close in score to warrantboth being displayed. The media guidance application may, in response todetermining that the difference is below the threshold difference,adjust a font associated with the display area, wherein both the firstattribute and the second attribute fit in the display area whengenerated for display in the adjusted font. For example, the mediaguidance application may adjust the font size (e.g., such that theaverage character size is smaller and thus more characters can fit inthe display area) and/or the font type (e.g., since different font typeshave different average character sizes) so that both the first and thesecond attribute can be displayed.

The media guidance application may generate for display the media assetidentifier with the set of attributes. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate identifiers of the attributes (e.g., strings ofcharacters) for display in a particular section of the displaycorresponding to the media asset identifier. As a specific example, themedia guidance application may generate for display a cell in a gridguide corresponding to the media asset identifier, where the attributes(e.g., title, genre, etc.) that were selected based on their ranking aredisplayed.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may visuallydistinguish (e.g., using a larger font or a different color) the toprated attribute from other displayed attributes displayed with the mediaasset identifier. Specifically, the media guidance application maydetermine a first attribute of the set of attributes with a highestscore. For example, based on the scores of the attributes that are partof the set, the media guidance application may determine (e.g., bycomparing the set of scores corresponding to each attribute in the set)which score is the highest and the attribute that it corresponds to. Themedia guidance application may then generate for display the firstattribute visually distinguished from other attributes in the set ofattributes. For example, the media guidance application may generate thefirst attribute (e.g., a string of characters) with the media assetidentifier in a different font, different color, different size, and/orany other visual indication that is not applied to other displayedattributes. In this manner, the media guidance application may highlighta particular attribute as being important (e.g., based on the contextand/or user preference). In some embodiments, specific colors, fonts,etc. may be used by the media guidance application to indicate to theuser that the user has a preference for the particular attribute. Forexample, if a user has watched a plurality of media assets with “TomCruise,” based on the user's viewing history as described above, thenthe media guidance application may display “Tom Cruise” in a differentfont color to indicate to the user that the user has a preference for“Tom Cruise.”

It should be noted the systems and/or methods described above may beapplied to, or used in accordance with, other systems, methods and/orapparatuses described in this disclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will beapparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, takenin conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like referencecharacters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a system presenting targetedmetadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 2 shows another illustrative example of a system presentingtargeted metadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 shows an illustrative example of a display screen for use inaccessing media content in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 4 shows another illustrative example of a display screen for use inaccessing media content in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an illustrative user equipment device inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting targetedmetadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining a number ofcharacters that fit in a display area, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for selecting a set ofattributes from the plurality of attributes that fit in the displayarea; and

FIG. 10 is another flowchart of illustrative steps for presentingtargeted metadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Systems and methods are described for presenting targeted metadataassociated with media asset identifiers. For example, based on storeduser preferences (e.g., the user likes a particular actor) and context(e.g., whether an actor is trending on social media near the user'slocation), the systems and methods may rank attributes associated withthe media asset (e.g., title, actors, director, genre, etc.). Thesystems and methods may then determine a number of attributes that canbe displayed based on a size of the media asset identifier (e.g., a cellin a grid-guide). The systems and methods may then select the number ofattributes that can be displayed based on the ranking (e.g., if twoattributes can fit in a cell of a grid-guide, then the top two rankedattributes may be selected). The systems and methods then display themedia asset identifier (e.g., the cell in the grid-guide) with theselected attributes.

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a system a system presentingtargeted metadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. For example, data structure 100 may storeattributes 104, along with associated types 102 and scores 106 for eachattribute of attributes 104. Attributes 104 may be ranked according toan assigned score (e.g., scores 106 are ordered from highest to lowest),calculated based on the context of each attribute and user preferencefor each attribute, as described further below. For example, attribute108 may be ranked higher than attribute 112, as score 110 associatedwith attribute 108 may be greater than score 114 associated withattribute 112. Similarly, attribute 112 may be ranked higher thanattribute 116, as score 114 associated with attribute 112 may be greaterthan score 118 associated with attribute 116. Similarly, attribute 116may be ranked higher than attribute 120, as score 118 associated withattribute 116 may be greater than score 122 associated with attribute120. Data structure 100 may be stored on one or more user devices (e.g.,any of the devices listed in FIGS. 5-6 below). Moreover, the mediaguidance application may use one or more of the processes described inFIGS. 7-10 to generate data structure 100 or any of the featuresdescribed therein.

Data structure 100 may be used by the media guidance application todetermine which attributes to display with media asset identifiers whengenerating display 150. For example, display 150 includes preview window152, which may show live video and/or audio associated with a currentlyselected channel. Display 150 also may include synopsis window 154,which may provide further information relating to a highlighted and/orselected program (e.g., in a time-channel grid-guide). Display 150 mayinclude a grid-guide displaying media asset identifiers. For example,channels 156 and time segments 158 may respectively form rows andcolumns organizing media asset identifiers. For example, channelidentifier 160 during three time segments may correspond to a particularmedia asset, for which media asset identifier 162 is displayed. Mediaasset identifier 162 may display attributes 108, 112, and 116 based onthe ranking in data structure 100. The size of media asset identifiersmay vary based on the number of time segments that the media assetencompasses, e.g., media asset identifier 162 is a different size thanmedia asset identifier 164. Display 150 may appear on one or more userdevices (e.g., any of the devices listed in FIGS. 5-6 below). Moreover,the media guidance application may use one or more of the processesdescribed in FIGS. 7-10 to generate display 150 or any of the featuresdescribed therein.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve aplurality of attributes associated with a media asset. For example, themedia guidance application may retrieve the plurality of attributes(e.g., attributes 104) from local storage or a remote server (e.g., froma media guidance database). For example, the media guidance applicationmay transmit a query including an identifier of the media asset to adatabase including a plurality of attributes associated with mediaassets. Based on the transmitted query, the media guidance applicationmay receive the plurality of attributes (e.g., attributes 104)associated with the media asset (e.g., in data structure 100). As aspecific example, the database may contain a plurality of tables, whereeach table is associated with a media asset, and each row of each tablecontains an attribute associated with the media asset. The row may alsoinclude a type of each attribute in another associated field (e.g.,“actor”). The identifier of the media asset may be any combination ofcharacters that are unique to the media asset. For example, theidentifier may be the title of the media asset, or a number assigned bya content provider.

As referred to herein, an “attribute” refers to any defining feature ofa media asset. For example, the feature may be a human who worked on themedia asset in some capacity, such as a director, actor, actress,producer, composer, animator, stage manager, or any other personinvolved with making the media asset. As another example, the featuremay be related to the subject matter of the media asset, such as akeyword, title, plot summary or portion of a plot summary. As anotherexample, the feature may be related to the release of the media asset,such as the year it was released, the box office earnings, awards, etc.

The media guidance application may generate a score for each attributeof the plurality of attributes. For example, the media guidanceapplication may assign a numerical value (e.g., scores 106) to eachattribute of the plurality of attributes (e.g., attributes 104)indicating how relevant the attribute is to the user given the user'spreferences and context of the attribute. Specifically, when generatingthe score, the media guidance application may determine, based on acurrent time and a location of a user, a context for each attribute(e.g., attributes 108, 112, 116, and 120). For example, the context maybe any one or combination of the current season (e.g., Christmas time),the current time (e.g., afternoon), the user's location (e.g., Ohio).For example, the media guidance application may determine the currenttime based on a current clock time. The media guidance application maydetermine the location based on GPS coordinates of a device of the userand/or based on entry of the location by the user. For example, themedia guidance application may prompt the user to enter his or hercurrent location via a user input device. The media guidance applicationmay then compare the determined location and current time to a datastructure that maps attributes and/or attribute types to current timesand/or locations. For example, the data structure may be a table whereeach row contains a range of times and/or locations that correspond to agiven context. For example, the context “Christmas” may correspond toDecember 1^(st) to 30^(th) in North America and Europe. The datastructure may, for each context, include an indication of which types ofattributes (e.g., genre, actor, etc.) or specific attributes (e.g.,“Christmas movie”) correspond to the context. Thus, if a particularattribute associated with a media asset is that the media asset is a“Christmas movie,” the context “Christmas” may be assigned if the timedetermined was December 10^(th) and the location was Ohio. The mediaguidance application may generate a list or other data structure with aplurality of fields for the plurality of attributes each with associatedfields for the context. For example, the media guidance application mayexecute a program script that iteratively writes a context to each fieldassociated with each attribute (e.g., by determining whether the currenttime and/or location are associated with an attribute as discussedabove).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may transmit, to asocial media website, the current time and location. For example, themedia guidance application may transmit a data packet including a datastructure with the value for the current time (e.g., an integer orseries of integers) and location (e.g., GPS coordinate or a string oftext identifying the location such as “Ohio”). The social media websitemay contain a data structure with currently relevant (e.g., “trending”)topics. For example, the topics may be relevant because they are thetopics that the most people in a given location at a given time areposting about. The media guidance application may receive, from thesocial media website, a data structure including a plurality of topicsat the current time and the location. For example, the media guidanceapplication may receive a table with a plurality of entries, eachassociated with a topic that is currently relevant at the current timeand the location of the user. As an example, the user may be located inNew York City and it may be New Year's Eve. The media guidanceapplication may receive, from the social media website, a table withentries for topics such as “Ball drop,” “NYE 2016,” “Resolutions,” etc.The entries in the table may include the text that summarizes the topic(e.g., the word “Resolutions” appears in many posts) and/or may be basedon tags, such as hashtags (e.g., # resolutions).

The media guidance application may then compare each attribute (e.g.,attributes 104) to each topic of the plurality of topics received fromthe social media website. For example, the media guidance applicationmay execute a program script utilizing a for-loop and retrieve the value(e.g., the string of characters defining each topic) from the tablereceived from the social media website. The media guidance applicationmay compare the characters of each retrieved topic with characters ofeach attribute (e.g., attributes 108, 112, 116, and 120) to determinewhether a given attribute is relevant (e.g., trending). The mediaguidance application may identify, based on the comparison, that a firstsubset of the plurality of attributes associated with the media asseteach correspond to a respective topic of the plurality of topics. Forexample, the media guidance application may identify a subset of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset that docorrespond to topics in the table received from the social mediawebsite. For example, many users in New York City may be posting about“car chase” and “Matt Damon,” and the table received from the socialmedia website may contain entries for those two topics. The mediaguidance application may determine that the “car chase” and “Matt Damon”match attributes associated with the movie “The Bourne Identity” forwhich a media asset identifier is to be displayed. The media guidanceapplication may determine the context for each attribute in the firstsubset based on the corresponding topic of the plurality of topics. Forexample, the context may be that the topic matches the exact text of theattribute (e.g., “Matt Damon” matches the exact text of attribute 112).As another example, the topic may not match the text of the attribute,but may match a category or otherwise be associated with the attribute.For example, the media guidance application may determine that a topicin the data structure received from the media guidance application is“sports,” which is related to but not equivalent to “New York Knicks.”The media guidance application may determine that the attribute isrelated to a topic based on a stored rule-set. For example, for thelocation “New York,” the media guidance application may access a “NewYork” database that includes categories (e.g., sports) and teams (e.g.,“Knicks”), locations (“Madison Square Garden”) etc. associated with thecategory to determine that an attribute is related to a topic.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare thecurrent time and the location of the user to a plurality of currenttimes and locations stored in a database. For example, the mediaguidance application may access the database locally in storage or at aremote server. The database may be structured as a table where each rowin the table includes fields with a time or range of times and locationor range of locations and corresponding fields with context mappings.For example, from October 20^(th) to October 31^(st) in North Americamay correspond to context mapping, “Halloween.” The media guidanceapplication may determine that the current time and location of the usermatches a stored time and a stored location in the database. Forexample, the media guidance application may compare the values for thecurrent time and the location of the user to values stored in thedatabase to determine a match. The media guidance application may thenretrieve, from a field associated with the matched stored time and thematched stored location, a context mapping for attributes. For example,the media guidance application may determine that a user in “Ohio” onOctober 27^(th) fulfills both criterions to be considered in the“Halloween” context mapping and retrieves an identifier (e.g.,“Halloween”) from the field associated with the context mapping.

The media guidance application may then process each attribute of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset (e.g.,attributes 104) with the context mapping for attributes. For example,the media guidance application may access another database or anotherrow in the same database (e.g., linked via a pointer) which includesattributes that the context mapping is applicable to. For example, the“Halloween” context mapping may be relevant to attributes, “ghostmovie,” “scary movie,” “Dracula,” etc. The media guidance applicationmay then process the attributes associated with the media asset todetermine whether they match the attributes identified as relating tothe context mapping. For example, a movie with an attribute “The BourneIdentity” (e.g., attribute 108) may not match one of the attributesassociated with a “Halloween” context mapping. Thus, the media guidanceapplication may not assign that attribute a context. Another attribute,such as, “Doug Liman” associated with the media asset may match one ofthe attributes associated with the context mapping, which may result ina higher ranking for the attribute (e.g., attribute 116) than at othertimes of the year. The media guidance application may process thecontext to determine a context value (e.g., which can be used to rankthe attributes as seen in data structure 100), as described furtherbelow.

The media guidance application may, when generating the score,determine, from a user profile associated with the user, a userpreference for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve a user profile associated with the user fromlocal storage or from a remote server. The media guidance applicationmay then retrieve stored characteristics and preferences of the userfrom the user profile. For example, the media guidance application mayretrieve a viewing history of the user and determine common attributes(e.g., indicating that the user has a preference for the attribute). Asa specific example, the media guidance application may determine from aviewing history for the user that the user has watched seven movies with“Matt Damon,” and thus the user has a preference for Matt Damon movies(e.g., which matches attribute 112 of the media asset). The mediaguidance application may analyze a threshold amount of time (e.g., onemonth) from the current time. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that over the past week the user has viewedmultiple movies of the “action” genre (e.g., which matches attribute 120of the media asset). The media guidance application may determine thatan attribute is a common attribute if the attribute appears a thresholdnumber of times in the user's viewing history (e.g., four times). Themedia guidance application may determine a preference from an explicitindication from the user (e.g., a stored list of attributes the userlikes). For example, the media guidance application may store a list ofattributes (e.g., actors) that the user has indicated that they like.Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may storea relative amount that the user likes a given attribute (e.g., 10/10).The media guidance application may generate for display a graphical userinterface allowing the user to input (e.g., via a user input interface)attributes that the user is interested in (e.g., the user may input,“Matt Damon” via a keyboard). The media guidance application maygenerate a list or other data structure with a plurality of fields forthe plurality of attributes each with associated fields for the userpreference. For example, the media guidance application may execute aprogram script that iteratively writes a context to each fieldassociated with each attribute (e.g., attributes 104).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve theuser profile. For example, the media guidance application may retrievethe user profile from local storage or a remote server (e.g., via acommunications network). The user profile may be any suitable datastructure for storing preferences and data relating to the user. Forexample the user profile may be a table or series of tables (e.g.,linked via pointers). The media guidance application may retrieve userpreferences for the user from the user profile. For example, the mediaguidance application may execute an SQL script (e.g., utilizing the“Select” statement) to retrieve data from particular fields in the userprofile. The media guidance application may compare each attribute toeach user preference of the user preferences. For example, the mediaguidance application may compare each retrieved user preference witheach attribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the mediaasset (e.g., attributes 104). For example, the media guidanceapplication may compare the characters of the user preference and thecharacters of a particular attribute to determine whether they match. Asa specific example, the media guidance application may determine that auser preference for the actor, “Matt Damon” matches an attribute “MattDamon” (e.g., attribute 112 stored in data structure 100) associatedwith the media asset “The Bourne Identity.” The media guidanceapplication may identify, based on comparing each attribute to each userpreference of the user preferences, that a second subset of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset each correspondto a respective user preference of the user preferences. For example,the media guidance application may determine the subset of the pluralityof attributes that match a user preference stored in the user profile.The media guidance application may then determine the user preferencefor each attribute in the second subset based on the corresponding userpreference of the user preferences. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate a list or other data structure including anidentifier of each attribute of the second subset and an indication thatthe attribute matched a user preference. In some embodiments, the mediaguidance application may additionally store a type of user preferencematched (e.g., based on a viewing history or a user favorite actors listetc.).

The media guidance application may, when generating the score, assignboth (1) a context value to each attribute based on the context and (2)a user weighting to each attribute based on the user preference. Forexample, the media guidance application may retrieve a list or otherdata structure with a plurality of fields for the plurality ofattributes (e.g., attributes 104) each with associated fields for thecontext and the user preference. The media guidance application mayprocess the list or other data structure (e.g., by reading in strings oftext or values corresponding to the context and the user preference foreach attribute). The media guidance application may then assign acontext value based on an algorithm mapping the context value and theuser weighting for each attribute to a numerical score. For example, ifthe time is December 10^(th), which corresponds to a context ofChristmas time and an attribute of a media asset is that it is a“Christmas movie,” the media guidance application may assign a higherscore to the “Christmas movie” attribute than it would at a differenttime of year (e.g., Summer). The media guidance application maysimilarly assign a user weighting based on the user preference. Forexample, the media guidance application may assign a greater userweighting to an attribute (e.g., “Matt Damon”) that matches a userpreference than one that does not. For example, the exact value of theuser weighting may depend on a relative amount that the user likes theattribute (e.g., a stored user preference for an attribute of 5/10 maycorrespond to a lower weighting than 8/10). As another example, theexact value of the user weighting may depend on the number of times auser has viewed media assets associated with the attribute (e.g., if auser has watched two movies with “Matt Damon” the weighting may be lowerthan if the user has watched ten movies with “Matt Damon”). The mediaguidance application may assign the context value and/or the userweighting based on a rule-set mapping contexts and/or user weightings toparticular values. In some embodiments, the values may be positive ornegative and may correspond to adjustments from default values for theattributes, as discussed further below.

The media guidance application may, when generating the score, calculatethe score based on the context value for each attribute and the userweighting for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may combine the user weighting and the context value togenerate a single composite score (e.g., scores 106) for each attribute(e.g., attributes 104). As a specific example, if the scores are basedon a ten point scale, and the context value is 4 and the user weightingis 4, the media guidance application may calculate a value of 8. In someembodiments, the media guidance application adjusts default values(e.g., which may be set to the same value, or set to specific valuesthat are different for each attribute) based on the calculated score.For example, if the default score is 5 and the media guidanceapplication determines that the context value is −1 and the userweighting is +3 for a given attribute, the media guidance applicationmay calculate a score of 7 for the attribute.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate thescore by adjusting default scores for attributes. Specifically, themedia guidance application may retrieve a data structure with defaultscores for the plurality of attributes associated with the media asset.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the datastructure from local storage or from a remote server. The default valuesmay be generated by a human. For example, a human metadata editor mayassign values for attributes associated with media assets (e.g.,attributes 104) based on the content in the media asset. For example,the human editor may assign a value of 9 out of 10 to title “The RedWedding” and a value of 3 out of 10 to actor “Kit Harrington” for aparticular episode of Game of Thrones where the title is particularlywell-known and/or important. The default values may also be generatedbased on an automated process. For example, based on querying a mediaaggregator for social media posts, news stories, and other publishedcontent identifying a particular media asset, the default values may begenerated based on the number of times particular attributes arementioned in connection with the media asset. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve, from a field corresponding to each attributeof the plurality of attributes, a default score for each attribute. Forexample, the media guidance application may execute a database querylanguage script, such as an SQL script, to retrieve a value (e.g., 4)for the default score for a particular attribute. The media guidanceapplication may then adjust the default score for each attribute basedon the context value and the user weighting. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve a default value (e.g., 4) for a givenattribute (e.g., attribute 120). The media guidance application, asdiscussed above, may determine values to adjust the default value basedon the context and the user preference (e.g., the context value and theuser weighting). For example, the media guidance application maydetermine that the user has a negative preference for the attribute(e.g., the user does not care about the attribute) and a value of −2 isassigned, but the context value is high (e.g., 5) because a famous actorassociated with the media asset has just won a major award. In thisexample, the media guidance application would calculate an score of 7for the attribute (e.g., it may move up in the ranking of attributesdiscussed below).

The media guidance application may rank the plurality of attributesbased on the score for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may store the calculated score (e.g., scores 106) for eachattribute (e.g., attributes 104) as well as an identifier of eachattribute in a data structure. The data structure may be a list, array,or other data structure suitable for storing the calculated scores foreach attribute. The media guidance application may then sort and orderthe attributes based on their associated scores (e.g., data structure100 orders attributes 104 from highest score 110 to lowest score 122).For example, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptutilizing a bubble sort, merge sort, or other suitable sorting algorithmto order the attributes from highest score to lowest score.

The media guidance application may determine a display size of a mediaasset identifier associated with the media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that a media asset identifier (e.g.,media asset identifier 162) that will be generated for display will beof given dimensions (e.g., pixel dimensions). The media guidanceapplication may determine the dimensions of the media asset identifierfrom a display template, as described further below.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a userinput corresponding to a request to generate a display with the mediaasset identifier. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive a user input (e.g., a “GUIDE” button on a remote control). Themedia guidance application may determine that the input corresponds topresenting a display screen (e.g., display 150) to the user. The mediaguidance application may determine the particular media assetidentifiers that need to be displayed (e.g., display 150 includeschannels 156 at time segments 158, for which specific media assetidentifiers, such as media asset identifier 162 need to be displayed)and query a media guidance data source to determine the particular mediaassets where information should be displayed as media asset identifiers.The media guidance application may retrieve a display template thatcorresponds to the user request, wherein the display template includes aplurality of display sizes associated with objects to be displayed. Forexample, the media guidance application may retrieve, either locallyfrom storage or remotely from a server via a communications network, thedisplay template (e.g., for display 150). The display template may beany suitable data structure, such as a class or a table, which containsparameters for displaying media asset identifiers. The display templatemay contain a plurality of display sizes (e.g., pixel dimensions) fordifferent locations where media asset identifiers will be displayed. Theplurality of display sizes may further be associated with particularobjects to be displayed (e.g., media asset identifiers 162 and 164,which are for media assets of different lengths, correspond to differentobjects with different display sizes). For example, a display size maybe associated with a parameter for the length of the program.Specifically, a one hour long media asset may correspond to a differentdisplay object stored in the display template (and hence differentdisplay dimensions) than a two hour long media asset.

The media guidance application may determine that the media assetidentifier associated with the media asset corresponds to a first objectto be displayed. For example, the media guidance application maydetermine that the media asset is a half hour long media asset andcorresponds to the half hour long object in the display template, whichhas an associated set of display dimensions (e.g., media assetidentifier 164 is displayed based on the half hour long object in thedisplay template). The media guidance application may retrieve, from thedisplay template, the display size associated with the first object tobe displayed. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve astored value or values (e.g., an integer) for the display dimensionsassociated with the first object that matches the characteristics of themedia asset.

The media guidance application may, based on the display size, determinea number of characters that fit in a display area. For example, themedia guidance application may retrieve from a field of a displaytemplate corresponding to a display (e.g., display 150) to be displayed(e.g., a grid-guide) that a particular object (e.g., a cell)corresponding to the media asset identifier (e.g., media assetidentifier 162) can fit a particular number of characters (e.g., 100characters). Alternatively or additionally, the media guidanceapplication may determine the number of characters based on a font type(e.g., Times New Roman) to be displayed with the media asset identifier(e.g., media asset identifier 162). For example, the media guidanceapplication may access a database that stores adjustments to a storednumber of default characters stored in the field of the display template(e.g., 100 characters). For example, the media guidance application maydetermine that a particular font type is 10% smaller, so 10% morecharacters can fit in the display area.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine thenumber of characters that fit in the display area (e.g., a portion ofmedia asset identifier 162 where text is displayed) based on a font typeto be displayed. Specifically, the media guidance application maydetermine a font type to be displayed in the display area. For example,the media guidance application may retrieve, from a stored field in adisplay template (e.g., as described above) an identifier of a fonttype. The identifier may be a string of characters (e.g., “Times”)and/or any other identifier (e.g., a combination of alphanumericcharacters) that can be matched to characteristics of the appropriatefont type. The media guidance application may retrieve an averagecharacter size for the font type. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve the average character size from a datastructure storing values for the average character size (e.g.,approximately as a rectangle and in pixel dimensions such as 20×30),where each average value is associated with the identifier of the fonttype. The media guidance application may then compare the averagecharacter size to the display size of the media asset identifier (e.g.,media asset identifier 162 or 164). For example, the media guidanceapplication may calculate, based on the average dimensions of thecharacter of the font type (e.g., 20 pixels in height, 30 pixels inwidth), how many characters fit in the display dimensions. As a specificexample, the media guidance application may retrieve values (e.g., froma display template) indicating that a given media asset identifier is 50pixels in height and 900 pixels in width and compare those values tocorresponding values for the dimensions of an average character of agiven font type. The media guidance application may, based on comparingthe average character size to the display size, determine the number ofcharacters that fit in the display area. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine (e.g., by dividing the correspondingdimensions of an average character) that two rows, each with 30characters can fit in the display. Thus, the media guidance applicationmay determine that 60 total characters can fit in the display.

The media guidance application may select, based on the ranking, a setof attributes from the plurality of attributes, wherein the total numberof characters in the set does not exceed the determined number ofcharacters that fit in the display area. For example, the media guidanceapplication may initialize a counter for the number of characters ofattributes that are currently selected and increment the counter basedon the number of characters in each attribute that is selected. As aspecific example, the media guidance application may select the highestranked attribute (e.g., attribute 108), which may have 19 characters,and set the counter to 19. The media guidance application may thenselect the next highest rated attribute (e.g., attribute 112) and updatethe counter by adding the number of characters of the next highest ratedattribute and so on until the counter exceeds the determined number ofcharacters that fit in the display area. For example, once the mediaguidance application determines that an nth retrieved attribute exceedsthe determined number of characters that fit in the display area, themedia guidance application may determine that the nth-1 retrievedattribute is the last attribute that fits in the display area.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may adjust the fontof text displayed with a media asset identifier (e.g., media assetidentifier 162) such that attributes with similar scores can both bedisplayed. Specifically, the media guidance application may determine,based on a number of characters of a first attribute of the rankedplurality of attributes, that the first attribute will be displayed. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that there isspace (e.g., there are enough characters available in the display area)to display the first attribute (e.g., attribute 112). As a specificexample, the media guidance application may determine the firstattribute can be displayed if the first attribute is 40 characters andthe number of characters available in the display area is 50. The mediaguidance application may then determine, based on a number of charactersof a second attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes, that thesecond attribute will not be displayed. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that there is not space (e.g., there are notenough characters available in the display area) to display the secondattribute (e.g., attribute 116). As a specific example, the mediaguidance application may determine that, since the first attribute willbe displayed and is 40 characters and the number of characters availablein the display area is now 10. If the number of characters of the secondattribute is greater than 10, the media guidance application maydetermine that the second attribute cannot be displayed in the displayarea (e.g., because it won't fit).

The media guidance application may calculate a difference between afirst score of the first attribute and a second score of the secondattribute. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve thescores of each attribute (e.g., score 114 of attribute 112 and score 118of attribute 116) from a data structure with attributes and associatedscores calculated (e.g., as described above). As a specific example, themedia guidance application may retrieve that the score for the firstattribute is 7.8 and the second attribute is 7.7 and may calculate adifference of 0.1 between the scores of the two attributes. The mediaguidance application may determine whether the difference is below athreshold difference. For example, the media guidance application maycompare the difference between the scores of two attributes (e.g., 0.1)to a threshold amount (e.g., 0.3) to determine whether the twoattributes are substantially close in score to warrant both beingdisplayed. The media guidance application may, in response todetermining that the difference is below the threshold difference,adjust a font associated with the display area, wherein both the firstattribute and the second attribute fit in the display area whengenerated for display in the adjusted font. For example, the mediaguidance application may adjust the font size (e.g., such that theaverage character size is smaller and thus more characters can fit inthe display area) and/or the font type (e.g., since different font typeshave different average character sizes) so that both the first and thesecond attribute can be displayed (e.g., with media asset identifier 162on display 150).

The media guidance application may generate for display the media assetidentifier with the set of attributes. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate identifiers of the attributes (e.g., strings ofcharacters of attributes 104) for display in a particular section of thedisplay (e.g., display 150) corresponding to the media asset identifier(e.g., media asset identifier 162). As a specific example, the mediaguidance application may generate for display a cell in a grid guidecorresponding to the media asset identifier, where the attributes (e.g.,title, genre, etc.) that were selected based on their ranking aredisplayed. As referred to herein, “a media asset identifier” refers toany graphics, text, or other data describing a media asset. In someembodiments, the media asset identifier may identify a series of mediaassets. In other embodiments, the media asset identifier may identify amovie, podcast, news article, or other form of consumable media contentsuch that a user can recognize the content.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may visuallydistinguish (e.g., using a larger font or a different color) the toprated attribute from other displayed attributes displayed with the mediaasset identifier. Specifically, the media guidance application maydetermine a first attribute of the set of attributes (e.g., attributes104) with a highest score (e.g., attribute 108 has highest score 110).For example, based on the scores of the attributes that are part of theset, the media guidance application may determine (e.g., by comparingthe set of scores corresponding to each attribute in the set) whichscore is the highest and the attribute that it corresponds to. The mediaguidance application may then generate for display the first attribute(e.g., attribute 108) visually distinguished from other attributes(e.g., attributes 112 and 116) in the set of attributes. For example,the media guidance application may generate the first attribute (e.g., astring of characters) with the media asset identifier in a differentfont, different color, different size, and/or any other visualindication that is not applied to other displayed attributes. In thismanner, the media guidance application may highlight a particularattribute as being important (e.g., based on the context and/or userpreference). In some embodiments, specific colors, fonts, etc. may beused by the media guidance application to indicate to the user that theuser has a preference for the particular attribute. For example, if auser has watched a plurality of media assets with “Tom Cruise,” based onthe user's viewing history as described above, then the media guidanceapplication may display “Tom Cruise” in a different font color toindicate to the user that the user has a preference for “Tom Cruise.”

FIG. 2 shows another illustrative example of a system a systempresenting targeted metadata with media asset identifiers, in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure. For example, data structure 200may store attribute types 202 and ratings 204 associated with eachattribute type. Attribute types may include “title” (e.g., type 206),“actor” (e.g., type 210), and “genre” (e.g., type 214). Type 206 may beassociated with rating 208. Similarly, type 210 may be associated withrating 212, and type 214 may be associated with rating 216. The mediaguidance application may use the user's preference (e.g., ratings 204)for certain attribute types (e.g., of attribute types 202) to determinewhich attributes to display.

The media guidance application may generate data structure 250, whichmay contain a plurality of parameters associated with attributes of amedia asset. The media guidance application may determine a number ofcharacters (e.g., number of characters 264, 266, and 268) associatedwith each attribute. The media guidance application may also determine atype (e.g., type 252, 254, and 256) associated with each attribute. Themedia guidance application may match each type in data structure 250 toa type in data structure 200 in order to determine a rating for eachattribute type (e.g., rating 258, 260, and 262). The ratings, number ofcharacters, and scores for the attributes may be input to maximum ratinggenerator 270, which determines the attributes that can be displayed ina display area (e.g., based on the number of characters). The maximumrating generator may also weigh the score (e.g., based on the userpreference and context for each attribute as described above withrespect to FIG. 1) when determining which attributes to display. As aspecific example, if the display size fits 20 characters, eitherattribute 252 alone can be displayed, or both attributes 254 and 256 canbe displayed. Since rating 258 is less than the combined rating ofratings 260 and 262, the maximum rating generator outputs set ofattributes 272 comprising attributes 254 and 256 as the attributes todisplay. Data structures 200 and 250 may be stored on one or more userdevices (e.g., any of the devices listed in FIGS. 5-6 below). Moreover,the media guidance application may use one or more of the processesdescribed in FIGS. 7-10 to generate data structures 200 and 250 or anyof the features described therein.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may maximize thenumber of attributes the user finds interesting that are displayed. Forexample, even though the episode title of a media asset is the highestranked attribute, the media guidance application may determine thatbecause it is a large number of characters (e.g., number of characters264), the user would prefer to see attributes (e.g., genre and actor)that are ranked two and three since the user's interest in those twoattributes combined (e.g., ratings 260 and 262) is greater than theinterest in the top ranked attribute alone (e.g., rating 258).Specifically, the media guidance application may retrieve, from the userprofile, a user display rating for each attribute type of a plurality ofattribute types. For example, the media guidance application may store adata structure (e.g., data structure 200) including a plurality of typesof attributes (e.g., attribute types 202) and a rating (e.g., ratings204, which may be on a scale of 1-10) in an associated field with eachattribute type. The media guidance application may then maximize a totaluser display rating of attributes that are displayed. Specifically, themedia guidance application may determine an attribute type for eachattribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the mediaasset. For example, the media guidance application may determine anattribute type (e.g., attribute type 252, 254, or 256) of each attributeof the plurality of attributes from a field associated with eachattribute. For example, the plurality of attributes for the media assetmay be organized in a table (e.g., data structure 250) where each rowcontains an attribute (e.g., “Tom Cruise”) and an associated field forthe attribute type (e.g., “actor”). Alternatively or additionally, themedia guidance application may determine the attribute type of anattribute by querying a media guidance data source to determine the typeof the attribute. For example, the media guidance application maytransmit a data packet containing the attribute, which may be comparedto entries in a database at the media guidance data source mappingattributes to attribute types. The media guidance application may thencompare the attribute type of the attribute to stored attribute types inthe data structure with the rating for the attribute type (e.g.,attribute type 252 is compared to attribute types 202 in data structure200).

The media guidance application may then determine a user display ratingfor each attribute of the plurality of attributes based on therespective attribute type. For example, the media guidance applicationmay determine the user rating (e.g., rating 258, 260, and 262) for eachattribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the media assetbased on the type (e.g., type 252, 254, and 256) of each attribute. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that “Tom Cruise”is an “actor” which corresponds to a user display rating of 5, and that“action” is a “genre” which corresponds to a user display rating of 2.The media guidance application may identify attributes of the pluralityof attributes that maximize the total user display rating by processingthe ranked plurality of attributes with a model (e.g., maximum ratinggenerator 270) including both (1) the user display rating and (2) anumber of characters of each attribute of the plurality of attributes.For example, the media guidance application may execute a program scriptthat reads in the number of characters of each attribute and the userdisplay rating associated with each attribute in order to maximize theuser display rating of the set of attributes displayed. For example, thetop three ranked attributes may have 80, 20, and 30 characters,respectively. The top three ranked attributes may also have user displayratings of 7, 5, and 4 respectively. In this example, the program scriptexecuted by the media guidance application may return that theattributes ranked second and third (e.g., set of attributes 272) shouldbe presented in a display area that has a maximum of 80 charactersbecause the display rating of 9 is greater than the display rating of 7(e.g., if only the top ranked attribute is presented, since due to itslength it is the only attribute that could be presented). The mediaguidance application may select the identifier attributes as the set ofattributes. For example, the media guidance application may determinethat attributes that maximize the user display rating should begenerated for display with the media asset and store the attributes asthe set of attributes.

The amount of content available to users in any given content deliverysystem can be substantial. Consequently, many users desire a form ofmedia guidance through an interface that allows users to efficientlynavigate content selections and easily identify content that they maydesire. An application that provides such guidance is referred to hereinas an interactive media guidance application or, sometimes, a mediaguidance application or a guidance application.

Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms dependingon the content for which they provide guidance. One typical type ofmedia guidance application is an interactive television program guide.Interactive television program guides (sometimes referred to aselectronic program guides) are well-known guidance applications that,among other things, allow users to navigate among and locate many typesof content or media assets. Interactive media guidance applications maygenerate graphical user interface screens that enable a user to navigateamong, locate and select content. As referred to herein, the terms“media asset” and “content” should be understood to mean anelectronically consumable user asset, such as television programming, aswell as pay-per-view programs, on-demand programs (as in video-on-demand(VOD) systems), Internet content (e.g., streaming content, downloadablecontent, Webcasts, etc.), video clips, audio, content information,pictures, rotating images, documents, playlists, websites, articles,books, electronic books, blogs, chat sessions, social media,applications, games, and/or any other media or multimedia and/orcombination of the same. Guidance applications also allow users tonavigate among and locate content. As referred to herein, the term“multimedia” should be understood to mean content that utilizes at leasttwo different content forms described above, for example, text, audio,images, video, or interactivity content forms. Content may be recorded,played, displayed or accessed by user equipment devices, but can also bepart of a live performance.

The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performingany of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded on computerreadable media. Computer readable media includes any media capable ofstoring data. The computer readable media may be transitory, including,but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagnetic signals,or may be non-transitory including, but not limited to, volatile andnon-volatile computer memory or storage devices such as a hard disk,floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media cards, register memory, processorcaches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”), etc.

With the advent of the Internet, mobile computing, and high-speedwireless networks, users are accessing media on user equipment deviceson which they traditionally did not. As referred to herein, the phrase“user equipment device,” “user equipment,” “user device,” “electronicdevice,” “electronic equipment,” “media equipment device,” or “mediadevice” should be understood to mean any device for accessing thecontent described above, such as a television, a Smart TV, a set-topbox, an integrated receiver decoder (IRD) for handling satellitetelevision, a digital storage device, a digital media receiver (DMR), adigital media adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVD player, aDVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAY player, aBLU-RAY recorder, a personal computer (PC), a laptop computer, a tabletcomputer, a WebTV box, a personal computer television (PC/TV), a PCmedia server, a PC media center, a hand-held computer, a stationarytelephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, aportable video player, a portable music player, a portable gamingmachine, a smart phone, or any other television equipment, computingequipment, or wireless device, and/or combination of the same. In someembodiments, the user equipment device may have a front facing screenand a rear facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angledscreens. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a frontfacing camera and/or a rear facing camera. On these user equipmentdevices, users may be able to navigate among and locate the same contentavailable through a television. Consequently, media guidance may beavailable on these devices, as well. The guidance provided may be forcontent available only through a television, for content available onlythrough one or more of other types of user equipment devices, or forcontent available both through a television and one or more of the othertypes of user equipment devices. The media guidance applications may beprovided as on-line applications (i.e., provided on a web-site), or asstand-alone applications or clients on user equipment devices. Variousdevices and platforms that may implement media guidance applications aredescribed in more detail below.

One of the functions of the media guidance application is to providemedia guidance data to users. As referred to herein, the phrase “mediaguidance data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any datarelated to content or data used in operating the guidance application.For example, the guidance data may include program information, guidanceapplication settings, user preferences, user profile information, medialistings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcastchannels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parentalcontrol ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information,actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos,etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D,etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type ofguidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locatedesired content selections.

FIGS. 3-4 show illustrative display screens that may be used to providemedia guidance data. The display screens shown in FIGS. 3-4 may beimplemented on any suitable user equipment device or platform. While thedisplays of FIGS. 3-4 are illustrated as full screen displays, they mayalso be fully or partially overlaid over content being displayed. A usermay indicate a desire to access content information by selecting aselectable option provided in a display screen (e.g., a menu option, alistings option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing a dedicatedbutton (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or other user inputinterface or device. In response to the user's indication, the mediaguidance application may provide a display screen with media guidancedata organized in one of several ways, such as by time and channel in agrid, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, by category(e.g., movies, sports, news, children, or other categories ofprogramming), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organizationcriteria.

FIG. 3 shows illustrative grid of a program listings display 300arranged by time and channel that also enables access to different typesof content in a single display. Display 300 may include grid 302 with:(1) a column of channel/content type identifiers 304, where eachchannel/content type identifier (which is a cell in the column)identifies a different channel or content type available; and (2) a rowof time identifiers 306, where each time identifier (which is a cell inthe row) identifies a time block of programming. Grid 302 also includescells of program listings, such as program listing 308, where eachlisting provides the title of the program provided on the listing'sassociated channel and time. With a user input device, a user can selectprogram listings by moving highlight region 310. Information relating tothe program listing selected by highlight region 310 may be provided inprogram information region 312. Region 312 may include, for example, theprogram title, the program description, the time the program is provided(if applicable), the channel the program is on (if applicable), theprogram's rating, and other desired information.

In addition to providing access to linear programming (e.g., contentthat is scheduled to be transmitted to a plurality of user equipmentdevices at a predetermined time and is provided according to aschedule), the media guidance application also provides access tonon-linear programming (e.g., content accessible to a user equipmentdevice at any time and is not provided according to a schedule).Non-linear programming may include content from different contentsources including on-demand content (e.g., VOD), Internet content (e.g.,streaming media, downloadable media, etc.), locally stored content(e.g., content stored on any user equipment device described above orother storage device), or other time-independent content. On-demandcontent may include movies or any other content provided by a particularcontent provider (e.g., HBO On Demand providing “The Sopranos” and “CurbYour Enthusiasm”). HBO ON DEMAND is a service mark owned by Time WarnerCompany L.P. et al. and THE SOPRANOS and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM aretrademarks owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. Internet content mayinclude web events, such as a chat session or Webcast, or contentavailable on-demand as streaming content or downloadable content throughan Internet web site or other Internet access (e.g. FTP).

Grid 302 may provide media guidance data for non-linear programmingincluding on-demand listing 314, recorded content listing 316, andInternet content listing 318. A display combining media guidance datafor content from different types of content sources is sometimesreferred to as a “mixed-media” display. Various permutations of thetypes of media guidance data that may be displayed that are differentthan display 300 may be based on user selection or guidance applicationdefinition (e.g., a display of only recorded and broadcast listings,only on-demand and broadcast listings, etc.). As illustrated, listings314, 316, and 318 are shown as spanning the entire time block displayedin grid 302 to indicate that selection of these listings may provideaccess to a display dedicated to on-demand listings, recorded listings,or Internet listings, respectively. In some embodiments, listings forthese content types may be included directly in grid 302. Additionalmedia guidance data may be displayed in response to the user selectingone of the navigational icons 320. (Pressing an arrow key on a userinput device may affect the display in a similar manner as selectingnavigational icons 320.)

Display 300 may also include video region 322, and options region 326.Video region 322 may allow the user to view and/or preview programs thatare currently available, will be available, or were available to theuser. The content of video region 322 may correspond to, or beindependent from, one of the listings displayed in grid 302. Griddisplays including a video region are sometimes referred to aspicture-in-guide (PIG) displays. PIG displays and their functionalitiesare described in greater detail in Satterfield et al. U.S. Pat. No.6,564,378, issued May 13, 2003 and Yuen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,794,issued May 29, 2001, which are hereby incorporated by reference hereinin their entireties. PIG displays may be included in other mediaguidance application display screens of the embodiments describedherein.

Options region 326 may allow the user to access different types ofcontent, media guidance application displays, and/or media guidanceapplication features. Options region 326 may be part of display 300 (andother display screens described herein), or may be invoked by a user byselecting an on-screen option or pressing a dedicated or assignablebutton on a user input device. The selectable options within optionsregion 326 may concern features related to program listings in grid 302or may include options available from a main menu display. Featuresrelated to program listings may include searching for other air times orways of receiving a program, recording a program, enabling seriesrecording of a program, setting program and/or channel as a favorite,purchasing a program, or other features. Options available from a mainmenu display may include search options, VOD options, parental controloptions, Internet options, cloud-based options, device synchronizationoptions, second screen device options, options to access various typesof media guidance data displays, options to subscribe to a premiumservice, options to edit a user's profile, options to access a browseoverlay, or other options.

The media guidance application may be personalized based on a user'spreferences. A personalized media guidance application allows a user tocustomize displays and features to create a personalized “experience”with the media guidance application. This personalized experience may becreated by allowing a user to input these customizations and/or by themedia guidance application monitoring user activity to determine varioususer preferences. Users may access their personalized guidanceapplication by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to theguidance application. Customization of the media guidance applicationmay be made in accordance with a user profile. The customizations mayinclude varying presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of displays,font size of text, etc.), aspects of content listings displayed (e.g.,only HDTV or only 3D programming, user-specified broadcast channelsbased on favorite channel selections, re-ordering the display ofchannels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording features (e.g.,recording or series recordings for particular users, recording quality,etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of Internetcontent (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail,electronically delivered articles, etc.) and other desiredcustomizations.

The media guidance application may allow a user to provide user profileinformation or may automatically compile user profile information. Themedia guidance application may, for example, monitor the content theuser accesses and/or other interactions the user may have with theguidance application. Additionally, the media guidance application mayobtain all or part of other user profiles that are related to aparticular user (e.g., from other web sites on the Internet the useraccesses, such as www.Tivo.com, from other media guidance applicationsthe user accesses, from other interactive applications the useraccesses, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.), and/orobtain information about the user from other sources that the mediaguidance application may access. As a result, a user can be providedwith a unified guidance application experience across the user'sdifferent user equipment devices. This type of user experience isdescribed in greater detail below in connection with FIG. 6. Additionalpersonalized media guidance application features are described ingreater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No.2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005, Boyer et al., U.S. Pat. No.7,165,098, issued Jan. 16, 2007, and Ellis et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2002/0174430, filed Feb. 21, 2002, which arehereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.

Another display arrangement for providing media guidance is shown inFIG. 4. Video mosaic display 400 includes selectable options 402 forcontent information organized based on content type, genre, and/or otherorganization criteria. In display 400, television listings option 404 isselected, thus providing listings 406, 408, 410, and 412 as broadcastprogram listings. In display 400 the listings may provide graphicalimages including cover art, still images from the content, video clippreviews, live video from the content, or other types of content thatindicate to a user the content being described by the media guidancedata in the listing. Each of the graphical listings may also beaccompanied by text to provide further information about the contentassociated with the listing. For example, listing 408 may include morethan one portion, including media portion 414 and text portion 416.Media portion 414 and/or text portion 416 may be selectable to viewcontent in full-screen or to view information related to the contentdisplayed in media portion 414 (e.g., to view listings for the channelthat the video is displayed on).

The listings in display 400 are of different sizes (i.e., listing 406 islarger than listings 408, 410, and 412), but if desired, all thelistings may be the same size. Listings may be of different sizes orgraphically accentuated to indicate degrees of interest to the user orto emphasize certain content, as desired by the content provider orbased on user preferences. Various systems and methods for graphicallyaccentuating content listings are discussed in, for example, Yates, U.S.Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885, filed Nov. 12, 2009,which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Users may access content and the media guidance application (and itsdisplay screens described above and below) from one or more of theiruser equipment devices. FIG. 5 shows a generalized embodiment ofillustrative user equipment device 500. More specific implementations ofuser equipment devices are discussed below in connection with FIG. 6.User equipment device 500 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 502. I/O path 502 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 504, which includesprocessing circuitry 506 and storage 508. Control circuitry 504 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 502. I/O path 502 may connect control circuitry 504 (andspecifically processing circuitry 506) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 5 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 504 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 506. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 504 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 508). Specifically, control circuitry 504 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 504 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by controlcircuitry 504 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 504 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths(which is described in more detail in connection with FIG. 6). Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 508 thatis part of control circuitry 504. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 508 may be used tostore various types of content described herein as well as mediaguidance data described above. Nonvolatile memory may also be used(e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions). Cloud-basedstorage, described in relation to FIG. 6, may be used to supplementstorage 508 or instead of storage 508.

Control circuitry 504 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 504 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of the userequipment 500. Circuitry 504 may also include digital-to-analogconverter circuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry forconverting between digital and analog signals. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may be used by the user equipment device to receive and todisplay, to play, or to record content. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may also be used to receive guidance data. The circuitrydescribed herein, including for example, the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaler, and analog/digitalcircuitry, may be implemented using software running on one or moregeneral purpose or specialized processors. Multiple tuners may beprovided to handle simultaneous tuning functions (e.g., watch and recordfunctions, picture-in-picture (PIP) functions, multiple-tuner recording,etc.). If storage 508 is provided as a separate device from userequipment 500, the tuning and encoding circuitry (including multipletuners) may be associated with storage 508.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 504 using user inputinterface 510. User input interface 510 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 512 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of userequipment device 500. For example, display 512 may be a touchscreen ortouch-sensitive display. In such circumstances, user input interface 510may be integrated with or combined with display 512. Display 512 may beone or more of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD)for a mobile device, amorphous silicon display, low temperature polysilicon display, electronic ink display, electrophoretic display, activematrix display, electro-wetting display, electrofluidic display, cathoderay tube display, light-emitting diode display, electroluminescentdisplay, plasma display panel, high-performance addressing display,thin-film transistor display, organic light-emitting diode display,surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), laser television,carbon nanotubes, quantum dot display, interferometric modulatordisplay, or any other suitable equipment for displaying visual images.In some embodiments, display 512 may be HDTV-capable. In someembodiments, display 512 may be a 3D display, and the interactive mediaguidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in 3D. Avideo card or graphics card may generate the output to the display 512.The video card may offer various functions such as accelerated renderingof 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or theability to connect multiple monitors. The video card may be anyprocessing circuitry described above in relation to control circuitry504. The video card may be integrated with the control circuitry 504.Speakers 514 may be provided as integrated with other elements of userequipment device 500 or may be stand-alone units. The audio component ofvideos and other content displayed on display 512 may be played throughspeakers 514. In some embodiments, the audio may be distributed to areceiver (not shown), which processes and outputs the audio via speakers514.

The guidance application may be implemented using any suitablearchitecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone applicationwholly-implemented on user equipment device 500. In such an approach,instructions of the application are stored locally (e.g., in storage508), and data for use by the application is downloaded on a periodicbasis (e.g., from an out-of-band feed, from an Internet resource, orusing another suitable approach). Control circuitry 504 may retrieveinstructions of the application from storage 508 and process theinstructions to generate any of the displays discussed herein. Based onthe processed instructions, control circuitry 504 may determine whataction to perform when input is received from input interface 510. Forexample, movement of a cursor on a display up/down may be indicated bythe processed instructions when input interface 510 indicates that anup/down button was selected.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-serverbased application. Data for use by a thick or thin client implemented onuser equipment device 500 is retrieved on-demand by issuing requests toa server remote to the user equipment device 500. In one example of aclient-server based guidance application, control circuitry 504 runs aweb browser that interprets web pages provided by a remote server. Forexample, the remote server may store the instructions for theapplication in a storage device. The remote server may process thestored instructions using circuitry (e.g., control circuitry 504) andgenerate the displays discussed above and below. The client device mayreceive the displays generated by the remote server and may display thecontent of the displays locally on equipment device 500. This way, theprocessing of the instructions is performed remotely by the server whilethe resulting displays are provided locally on equipment device 500.Equipment device 500 may receive inputs from the user via inputinterface 510 and transmit those inputs to the remote server forprocessing and generating the corresponding displays. For example,equipment device 500 may transmit a communication to the remote serverindicating that an up/down button was selected via input interface 510.The remote server may process instructions in accordance with that inputand generate a display of the application corresponding to the input(e.g., a display that moves a cursor up/down). The generated display isthen transmitted to equipment device 500 for presentation to the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded andinterpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (runby control circuitry 504). In some embodiments, the guidance applicationmay be encoded in the ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received bycontrol circuitry 504 as part of a suitable feed, and interpreted by auser agent running on control circuitry 504. For example, the guidanceapplication may be an EBIF application. In some embodiments, theguidance application may be defined by a series of JAVA-based files thatare received and run by a local virtual machine or other suitablemiddleware executed by control circuitry 504. In some of suchembodiments (e.g., those employing MPEG-2 or other digital mediaencoding schemes), the guidance application may be, for example, encodedand transmitted in an MPEG-2 object carousel with the MPEG audio andvideo packets of a program.

User equipment device 500 of FIG. 5 can be implemented in system 600 ofFIG. 6 as user television equipment 602, user computer equipment 604,wireless user communications device 606, or any other type of userequipment suitable for accessing content, such as a non-portable gamingmachine. For simplicity, these devices may be referred to hereincollectively as user equipment or user equipment devices, and may besubstantially similar to user equipment devices described above. Userequipment devices, on which a media guidance application may beimplemented, may function as a standalone device or may be part of anetwork of devices. Various network configurations of devices may beimplemented and are discussed in more detail below.

A user equipment device utilizing at least some of the system featuresdescribed above in connection with FIG. 5 may not be classified solelyas user television equipment 602, user computer equipment 604, or awireless user communications device 606. For example, user televisionequipment 602 may, like some user computer equipment 604, beInternet-enabled allowing for access to Internet content, while usercomputer equipment 604 may, like some television equipment 602, includea tuner allowing for access to television programming. The mediaguidance application may have the same layout on various different typesof user equipment or may be tailored to the display capabilities of theuser equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 604, theguidance application may be provided as a web site accessed by a webbrowser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled downfor wireless user communications devices 606.

In system 600, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 6 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

In some embodiments, a user equipment device (e.g., user televisionequipment 602, user computer equipment 604, wireless user communicationsdevice 606) may be referred to as a “second screen device.” For example,a second screen device may supplement content presented on a first userequipment device. The content presented on the second screen device maybe any suitable content that supplements the content presented on thefirst device. In some embodiments, the second screen device provides aninterface for adjusting settings and display preferences of the firstdevice. In some embodiments, the second screen device is configured forinteracting with other second screen devices or for interacting with asocial network. The second screen device can be located in the same roomas the first device, a different room from the first device but in thesame house or building, or in a different building from the firstdevice.

The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent mediaguidance application settings across in-home devices and remote devices.Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and programfavorites, programming preferences that the guidance applicationutilizes to make programming recommendations, display preferences, andother desirable guidance settings. For example, if a user sets a channelas a favorite on, for example, the web site www.Tivo.com on theirpersonal computer at their office, the same channel would appear as afavorite on the user's in-home devices (e.g., user television equipmentand user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile devices, ifdesired. Therefore, changes made on one user equipment device can changethe guidance experience on another user equipment device, regardless ofwhether they are the same or a different type of user equipment device.In addition, the changes made may be based on settings input by a user,as well as user activity monitored by the guidance application.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network 614.Namely, user television equipment 602, user computer equipment 604, andwireless user communications device 606 are coupled to communicationsnetwork 614 via communications paths 608, 610, and 612, respectively.Communications network 614 may be one or more networks including theInternet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice or data network (e.g., a4G or LTE network), cable network, public switched telephone network, orother types of communications network or combinations of communicationsnetworks. Paths 608, 610, and 612 may separately or together include oneor more communications paths, such as, a satellite path, a fiber-opticpath, a cable path, a path that supports Internet communications (e.g.,IPTV), free-space connections (e.g., for broadcast or other wirelesssignals), or any other suitable wired or wireless communications path orcombination of such paths. Path 612 is drawn with dotted lines toindicate that in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 6 it is awireless path and paths 608 and 610 are drawn as solid lines to indicatethey are wired paths (although these paths may be wireless paths, ifdesired). Communications with the user equipment devices may be providedby one or more of these communications paths, but are shown as a singlepath in FIG. 6 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 608, 610, and 612, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 614.

System 600 includes content source 616 and media guidance data source618 coupled to communications network 614 via communication paths 620and 622, respectively. Paths 620 and 622 may include any of thecommunication paths described above in connection with paths 608, 610,and 612. Communications with the content source 616 and media guidancedata source 618 may be exchanged over one or more communications paths,but are shown as a single path in FIG. 6 to avoid overcomplicating thedrawing. In addition, there may be more than one of each of contentsource 616 and media guidance data source 618, but only one of each isshown in FIG. 6 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. (The differenttypes of each of these sources are discussed below.) If desired, contentsource 616 and media guidance data source 618 may be integrated as onesource device. Although communications between sources 616 and 618 withuser equipment devices 602, 604, and 606 are shown as throughcommunications network 614, in some embodiments, sources 616 and 618 maycommunicate directly with user equipment devices 602, 604, and 606 viacommunication paths (not shown) such as those described above inconnection with paths 608, 610, and 612.

Content source 616 may include one or more types of content distributionequipment including a television distribution facility, cable systemheadend, satellite distribution facility, programming sources (e.g.,television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.), intermediatedistribution facilities and/or servers, Internet providers, on-demandmedia servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademark owned bythe National Broadcasting Company, Inc., ABC is a trademark owned by theAmerican Broadcasting Company, Inc., and HBO is a trademark owned by theHome Box Office, Inc. Content source 616 may be the originator ofcontent (e.g., a television broadcaster, a Webcast provider, etc.) ormay not be the originator of content (e.g., an on-demand contentprovider, an Internet provider of content of broadcast programs fordownloading, etc.). Content source 616 may include cable sources,satellite providers, on-demand providers, Internet providers,over-the-top content providers, or other providers of content. Contentsource 616 may also include a remote media server used to storedifferent types of content (including video content selected by a user),in a location remote from any of the user equipment devices. Systems andmethods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely storedcontent to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connectionwith Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892, issued Jul. 20, 2010, whichis hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Media guidance data source 618 may provide media guidance data, such asthe media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may beprovided to the user equipment devices using any suitable approach. Insome embodiments, the guidance application may be a stand-aloneinteractive television program guide that receives program guide datavia a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). Programschedule data and other guidance data may be provided to the userequipment on a television channel sideband, using an in-band digitalsignal, using an out-of-band digital signal, or by any other suitabledata transmission technique. Program schedule data and other mediaguidance data may be provided to user equipment on multiple analog ordigital television channels.

In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 618may be provided to users' equipment using a client-server approach. Forexample, a user equipment device may pull media guidance data from aserver, or a server may push media guidance data to a user equipmentdevice. In some embodiments, a guidance application client residing onthe user's equipment may initiate sessions with source 618 to obtainguidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is out of dateor when the user equipment device receives a request from the user toreceive data. Media guidance may be provided to the user equipment withany suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, a user-specifiedperiod of time, a system-specified period of time, in response to arequest from user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 618 mayprovide user equipment devices 602, 604, and 606 the media guidanceapplication itself or software updates for the media guidanceapplication.

In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data.For example, the viewer data may include current and/or historical useractivity information (e.g., what content the user typically watches,what times of day the user watches content, whether the user interactswith a social network, at what times the user interacts with a socialnetwork to post information, what types of content the user typicallywatches (e.g., pay TV or free TV), mood, brain activity information,etc.). The media guidance data may also include subscription data. Forexample, the subscription data may identify to which sources or servicesa given user subscribes and/or to which sources or services the givenuser has previously subscribed but later terminated access (e.g.,whether the user subscribes to premium channels, whether the user hasadded a premium level of services, whether the user has increasedInternet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or thesubscription data may identify patterns of a given user for a period ofmore than one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., asurvivor model) used for generating a score that indicates a likelihooda given user will terminate access to a service/source. For example, themedia guidance application may process the viewer data with thesubscription data using the model to generate a value or score thatindicates a likelihood of whether the given user will terminate accessto a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score mayindicate a higher level of confidence that the user will terminateaccess to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the mediaguidance application may generate promotions that entice the user tokeep the particular service or source indicated by the score as one towhich the user will likely terminate access.

Media guidance applications may be, for example, stand-aloneapplications implemented on user equipment devices. For example, themedia guidance application may be implemented as software or a set ofexecutable instructions which may be stored in storage 508, and executedby control circuitry 504 of a user equipment device 500. In someembodiments, media guidance applications may be client-serverapplications where only a client application resides on the userequipment device, and server application resides on a remote server. Forexample, media guidance applications may be implemented partially as aclient application on control circuitry 504 of user equipment device 500and partially on a remote server as a server application (e.g., mediaguidance data source 618) running on control circuitry of the remoteserver. When executed by control circuitry of the remote server (such asmedia guidance data source 618), the media guidance application mayinstruct the control circuitry to generate the guidance applicationdisplays and transmit the generated displays to the user equipmentdevices. The server application may instruct the control circuitry ofthe media guidance data source 618 to transmit data for storage on theuser equipment. The client application may instruct control circuitry ofthe receiving user equipment to generate the guidance applicationdisplays.

Content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices602, 604, and 606 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT contentdelivery allows Internet-enabled user devices, including any userequipment device described above, to receive content that is transferredover the Internet, including any content described above, in addition tocontent received over cable or satellite connections. OTT content isdelivered via an Internet connection provided by an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), but a third party distributes the content. The ISP maynot be responsible for the viewing abilities, copyrights, orredistribution of the content, and may only transfer IP packets providedby the OTT content provider. Examples of OTT content providers includeYOUTUBE, NETFLIX, and HULU, which provide audio and video via IPpackets. Youtube is a trademark owned by Google Inc., Netflix is atrademark owned by Netflix Inc., and Hulu is a trademark owned by Hulu,LLC. OTT content providers may additionally or alternatively providemedia guidance data described above. In addition to content and/or mediaguidance data, providers of OTT content can distribute media guidanceapplications (e.g., web-based applications or cloud-based applications),or the content can be displayed by media guidance applications stored onthe user equipment device.

Media guidance system 600 is intended to illustrate a number ofapproaches, or network configurations, by which user equipment devicesand sources of content and guidance data may communicate with each otherfor the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Theembodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset ofthese approaches, or in a system employing other approaches fordelivering content and providing media guidance. The following fourapproaches provide specific illustrations of the generalized example ofFIG. 6.

In one approach, user equipment devices may communicate with each otherwithin a home network. User equipment devices can communicate with eachother directly via short-range point-to-point communication schemesdescribed above, via indirect paths through a hub or other similardevice provided on a home network, or via communications network 614.Each of the multiple individuals in a single home may operate differentuser equipment devices on the home network. As a result, it may bedesirable for various media guidance information or settings to becommunicated between the different user equipment devices. For example,it may be desirable for users to maintain consistent media guidanceapplication settings on different user equipment devices within a homenetwork, as described in greater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. PatentPublication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005. Different types ofuser equipment devices in a home network may also communicate with eachother to transmit content. For example, a user may transmit content fromuser computer equipment to a portable video player or portable musicplayer.

In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment bywhich they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, someusers may have home networks that are accessed by in-home and mobiledevices. Users may control in-home devices via a media guidanceapplication implemented on a remote device. For example, users mayaccess an online media guidance application on a website via a personalcomputer at their office, or a mobile device such as a PDA orweb-enabled mobile telephone. The user may set various settings (e.g.,recordings, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidanceapplication to control the user's in-home equipment. The online guidemay control the user's equipment directly, or by communicating with amedia guidance application on the user's in-home equipment. Varioussystems and methods for user equipment devices communicating, where theuser equipment devices are in locations remote from each other, isdiscussed in, for example, Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,046,801, issuedOct. 25, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety.

In a third approach, users of user equipment devices inside and outsidea home can use their media guidance application to communicate directlywith content source 616 to access content. Specifically, within a home,users of user television equipment 602 and user computer equipment 604may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locatedesirable content. Users may also access the media guidance applicationoutside of the home using wireless user communications devices 606 tonavigate among and locate desirable content.

In a fourth approach, user equipment devices may operate in a cloudcomputing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computingenvironment, various types of computing services for content sharing,storage or distribution (e.g., video sharing sites or social networkingsites) are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing andstorage resources, referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloudcan include a collection of server computing devices, which may belocated centrally or at distributed locations, that provide cloud-basedservices to various types of users and devices connected via a networksuch as the Internet via communications network 614. These cloudresources may include one or more content sources 616 and one or moremedia guidance data sources 618. In addition or in the alternative, theremote computing sites may include other user equipment devices, such asuser television equipment 602, user computer equipment 604, and wirelessuser communications device 606. For example, the other user equipmentdevices may provide access to a stored copy of a video or a streamedvideo. In such embodiments, user equipment devices may operate in apeer-to-peer manner without communicating with a central server.

The cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, contentsharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well asaccess to any content described above, for user equipment devices.Services can be provided in the cloud through cloud computing serviceproviders, or through other providers of online services. For example,the cloud-based services can include a content storage service, acontent sharing site, a social networking site, or other services viawhich user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others onconnected devices. These cloud-based services may allow a user equipmentdevice to store content to the cloud and to receive content from thecloud rather than storing content locally and accessing locally-storedcontent.

A user may use various content capture devices, such as camcorders,digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, andhandheld computing devices, to record content. The user can uploadcontent to a content storage service on the cloud either directly, forexample, from user computer equipment 604 or wireless usercommunications device 606 having content capture feature. Alternatively,the user can first transfer the content to a user equipment device, suchas user computer equipment 604. The user equipment device storing thecontent uploads the content to the cloud using a data transmissionservice on communications network 614. In some embodiments, the userequipment device itself is a cloud resource, and other user equipmentdevices can access the content directly from the user equipment deviceon which the user stored the content.

Cloud resources may be accessed by a user equipment device using, forexample, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, and/or any combination of accessapplications of the same. The user equipment device may be a cloudclient that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or theuser equipment device may have some functionality without access tocloud resources. For example, some applications running on the userequipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications deliveredas a service over the Internet, while other applications may be storedand run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a user devicemay receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. Forexample, a user device can stream audio from one cloud resource whiledownloading content from a second cloud resource. Or a user device candownload content from multiple cloud resources for more efficientdownloading. In some embodiments, user equipment devices can use cloudresources for processing operations such as the processing operationsperformed by processing circuitry described in relation to FIG. 5.

As referred herein, the term “in response to” refers to initiated as aresult of. For example, a first action being performed in response to asecond action may include interstitial steps between the first actionand the second action. As referred herein, the term “directly inresponse to” refers to caused by. For example, a first action beingperformed directly in response to a second action may not includeinterstitial steps between the first action and the second action.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting targetedmetadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. For example, a media guidance applicationimplementing process 700 may be executed by control circuitry 504 (FIG.5). It should be noted that process 700 or any step thereof could beperformed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS. 5-6.

Process 700 begins with 702, where the media guidance applicationretrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a plurality ofattributes associated with a media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) the plurality of attributes from local storage (e.g., storage 508(FIG. 5)) or a remote server (e.g., from media guidance data source 618via communications network 614 (FIG. 6)). For example, the mediaguidance application may transmit (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a query including an identifier of the media asset to a databaseincluding a plurality of attributes associated with media assets. Basedon the transmitted query, the media guidance application may receive(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset (e.g., in a list or other datastructure). As a specific example, the database may contain a pluralityof tables, where each table is associated with a media asset, and eachrow of each table contains an attribute associated with the media asset.The row may also include a type of each attribute in another associatedfield (e.g., “actor”). The identifier of the media asset may be anycombination of characters that are unique to the media asset. Forexample, the identifier may be the title of the media asset, or a numberassigned by a content provider (e.g., content source 610 (FIG. 6)).

Process 700 continues to 704, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), based on acurrent time and a location of a user, a context for an attribute of theplurality of attributes. For example, the context may be any one orcombination of the current season (e.g., Christmas time), the currenttime (e.g., afternoon), the user's location (e.g., Ohio). For example,the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the current time based on a current clock time.The media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the location based on GPS coordinates of adevice of the user (e.g., any of the devices discussed with respect toFIGS. 5-6) and/or based on an entry (e.g., via user input interface 510(FIG. 5)) of the location by the user. The media guidance applicationmay then compare (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) thedetermined location and current time to a data structure (e.g., storedlocally in storage 508 or remotely at media guidance data source 618accessible via communications network 614) that maps attributes and/orattribute types to current times and/or locations. For example, the datastructure may be a table where each row contains a range of times and/orlocations that correspond to a given context. For example, the context“Christmas” may correspond to December 1^(st) to 30^(th) in NorthAmerica and Europe. The data structure may, for each context, include anindication of which types of attributes (e.g., genre, actor, etc.) orspecific attributes (e.g., “Christmas movie”) correspond to the context.Thus, if a particular attribute associated with a media asset is thatthe media asset is a “Christmas movie,” the media guidance applicationmay assign (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the context“Christmas” if the time determined was December 10^(th) and the locationwas Ohio.

Process 700 continues to 706, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from a userprofile associated with the user, a user preference for the attribute.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a user profile associated with the userfrom local storage (e.g., storage 508 (FIG. 5)) or from a remote server(e.g., media guidance data source 618 via communications network 614(FIG. 6)). The media guidance application may then retrieve (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) stored characteristics and preferencesof the user from the user profile. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) aviewing history of the user and determine common attributes (e.g.,indicating that the user has a preference for the attribute). As aspecific example, the media guidance application may determine (e.g.,via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) from a viewing history for the userthat the user has watched seven movies with “Seth Rogen,” and thus theuser has a preference for Seth Rogen movies (e.g., movies where anassociated attribute is “Seth Rogen”). The media guidance applicationmay determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a preferencefrom an explicit indication from the user (e.g., a stored list ofattributes the user likes). For example, the media guidance applicationmay store (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a list ofattributes (e.g., actors) that the user has indicated that they like(e.g., manually input via user input interface 510).

Process 700 continues to 708, where the media guidance applicationassigns (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) both (1) a contextvalue to the attribute based on the context and (2) a user weighting tothe attribute based on the user preference. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a list or other data structure with a plurality of fields for theplurality of attributes each with associated fields for the context andthe user preference. The media guidance application may process (e.g.,via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the list or other data structure(e.g., by reading in strings of text or values corresponding to thecontext and the user preference for each attribute). The media guidanceapplication may then assign (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) acontext value based on an algorithm mapping the context value and theuser weighting for each attribute to a numerical score. For example, ifthe date is December 10^(th), which corresponds to a context ofChristmas time and an attribute of a media asset is that it is a“Christmas movie,” the media guidance application may assign (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a higher score to the “Christmas movie”attribute than it would at a different time of year (e.g., Summer). Themedia guidance application may similarly assign (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a user weighting based on the user preference.For example, the media guidance application may assign (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a greater user weighting to an attribute(e.g., “Seth Rogen”) that matches a user preference than one that doesnot. For example, the exact value of the user weighting may depend on arelative amount that the user likes the attribute (e.g., a stored userpreference for an attribute of 5/10 may correspond to a lower weightingthan 8/10).

Process 700 continues to 710, where the media guidance applicationcalculates (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a score for theattribute based on the context value for the attribute and the userweighting for the attribute. For example, the media guidance applicationmay combine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the userweighting and the context value to generate a single composite score foreach attribute. As a specific example, if the scores are based on a tenpoint scale, and the context value is 4 and the user weighting is 4, themedia guidance application may calculate (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) a value of 8.

Process 700 continues to 712, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) if a score hasbeen calculated for each attribute of the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset. For example, the media guidanceapplication may execute (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) aprogram script that iteratively determines a score (e.g., based onperforming steps 704 through 710) for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes. If, at 712, the media guidance application determines that ascore has not been calculated for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes, process 700 returns to 704, where the media guidanceapplication determines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), basedon a current time and a location of a user, a context for an attributeof the plurality of attributes. For example, if the media guidanceapplication determines (e.g., based on an iterator of a for-loopexecuted by the media guidance application being less than the totalnumber of attributes in the plurality of attributes) that an attributeremains for which a score has not yet been calculated, the mediaguidance application may return to 704 and determine a context for thatattribute. The media guidance application may, alternatively oradditionally, generate (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a datastructure with identifiers of each attribute, where the data structureincludes a field for the score for each attribute. If the media guidanceapplication determines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) thatthe field associated with one or more attributes is empty, the mediaguidance application may return to 704 and determine a context of theattribute, as described above.

If, at 712, the media guidance application determines that a score hasbeen calculated for each attribute of the plurality of attributes,process 700 continues to 714, where the media guidance application ranks(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the plurality of attributesbased on the score for each attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may store (e.g., in storage 508 (FIG. 5) or remotely atmedia guidance data source 618 accessible via communications network 614(FIG. 6)) the calculated score for each attribute as well as anidentifier of each attribute in a data structure. The data structure maybe a list, array, or other data structure suitable for storing thecalculated scores for each attribute. The media guidance application maythen sort (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) and order theattributes based on their associated scores. For example, the mediaguidance application may execute (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a program script utilizing a bubble sort, merge sort, or othersuitable sorting algorithm to order the attributes from highest score tolowest score.

Process 700 continues to 716, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a display size ofa media asset identifier associated with the media asset. For example,the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that a media asset identifier that will begenerated for display will be of given dimensions (e.g., pixeldimensions). The media guidance application may determine (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the dimensions of the media assetidentifier from a field associated with a display object for the mediaguidance application in a display template.

Process 700 continues to 718, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), based on thedisplay size, a number of characters that fit in a display area. Forexample, the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) from a field of a display template correspondingto a display to be displayed (e.g., a grid-guide) that a particularobject (e.g., a cell) corresponding to the media asset identifier canfit a particular number of characters (e.g., 100 characters).Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application maydetermine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the number ofcharacters based on a font type (e.g., Times New Roman) to be displayedwith the media asset identifier. For example, the media guidanceapplication may access (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) adatabase (e.g., in storage 508 (FIG. 5) or remotely at media guidancedata source 618 accessible via communications network 614 (FIG. 6)) thatstores adjustments to a stored number of default characters stored inthe field of the display template (e.g., 100 characters). For example,the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that a particular font type is 10% smaller, so10% more characters can fit in the display area.

Process 700 continues to 720, where the media guidance applicationselects (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), based on theranking, a set of attributes from the plurality of attributes, whereinthe total number of characters in the set does not exceed the determinednumber of characters that fit in the display area. For example, themedia guidance application may initialize (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) a counter for the number of characters of attributes thatare currently selected and increment the counter based on the number ofcharacters in each attribute that is selected. As a specific example,the media guidance application may select (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) the highest ranked attribute, which may have 30characters, and set the counter to 30. The media guidance applicationmay then select (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the nexthighest rated attribute and update the counter by adding the number ofcharacters of the next highest rated attribute and so on until thecounter exceeds the determined number of characters that fit in thedisplay area. For example, once the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that an nthretrieved attribute exceeds the determined number of characters that fitin the display area, the media guidance application may determine (e.g.,via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that the nth-1 retrieved attributeis the last attribute that fits in the display area.

Process 700 continues to 722, where the media guidance applicationgenerates (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) for display themedia asset identifier with the set of attributes. For example, themedia guidance application may generate (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) identifiers of the attributes (e.g., strings of characters)for display (e.g., on display 512 (FIG. 5)) in a particular section ofthe display corresponding to the media asset identifier. As a specificexample, the media guidance application may generate (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) for display (e.g., on display 512 (FIG. 5)) acell in a grid guide corresponding to the media asset identifier, wherethe attributes (e.g., title, genre, etc.) that were selected based ontheir ranking are displayed.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining a number ofcharacters that fit in a display area, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. For example, a media guidance applicationimplementing process 800 may be executed by control circuitry 504 (FIG.5). It should be noted that process 800 or any step thereof could beperformed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS. 5-6.Process 800 starts at 802, where the media guidance application begins(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a process for determining anumber of characters that fit in a display area. For example, the mediaguidance application may initialize the necessary variables and execute(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a program script calling aparticular method to execute process 800.

Process 800 continues to 804, where the media guidance applicationretrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a font to bedisplayed in the display area. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)),from a stored field in a display template (e.g., as described above withrespect to FIG. 1) an identifier of a font type for a display area(e.g., a cell in a grid-guide). The identifier may be a string ofcharacters (e.g., “Times”) and/or any other identifier (e.g., acombination of alphanumeric characters) that can be matched tocharacteristics of the appropriate font type, which may also be storedin the display template or in a separate data structure.

Process 800 continues to 806, where the media guidance applicationaccesses (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a font databasecontaining fields storing an average height and an average width ofcharacters for each of a plurality of fonts. For example, the mediaguidance application may access the font database (e.g., locally instorage 508 (FIG. 5) or remotely at media guidance data source 618accessible via communications network 614 (FIG. 6)). The font databasemay be organized as a table and contain a plurality of rows, where eachrow contains an identifier of a font as well as attribute (e.g., averagesizes) of the font in associated fields.

Process 800 continues to 808, where the media guidance applicationcompares (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the font to theplurality of fonts stored in the fonts database. For example, the mediaguidance application may compare (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) the characters retrieved from the display template identifying thefont with each of a plurality of identifiers of fonts stored in the fontdatabase.

Process 800 continues to 810, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) whether the fontmatches a font stored in the fonts database. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) a match if each character of the font to be displayed matches(e.g., in order) characters of the identifier. In some embodiments, themedia guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) a match if a threshold percentage of characters match(e.g., 90%).

If, at 810, the media guidance application determines that the font doesmatch a font stored in the fonts database, process 800 continues to 812,where the media guidance application retrieves (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from a first field associated with the matchedfont in the fonts database, an average height value. For example, themedia guidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)), from a field associated with the matched font stored in thefont database, a value (e.g., 40 pixels) for the average height of thefont. In some embodiments, the field may contain a mathematical functionof font size (e.g., 12-point), which the media guidance application mayretrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)). The media guidanceapplication may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) theaverage height value based on inputting a font size (e.g., stored in thedisplay template) into the mathematical function and receiving theaverage height value as an output.

Process 800 continues to 814, where the media guidance applicationretrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from a secondfield associated with the matched font in the fonts database, an averagewidth value. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from another fieldassociated with the matched font stored in the font database, a value(e.g., 20 pixels) for the average width of the font. In someembodiments, the field may contain a mathematical function of font size(e.g., 12-point), which the media guidance application may retrieve(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)). The media guidanceapplication may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) theaverage width value based on inputting a font size (e.g., stored in thedisplay template) into the mathematical function and receiving theaverage width (e.g., 20 pixels) as an output.

If, at 810, the media guidance application determines that the font doesnot match a font stored in the fonts database, process 800 continues to816, where the media guidance application retrieves (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a default height as the average height value anda default width as the average width value. For example, if no entry forthe font to be display matches a font in the font database, the mediaguidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) default values stored in the fonts database for the average heightand width of all fonts in the database and use these values toapproximate the number of characters that will fit in a display area, asdescribed further below.

Process 800 continues to 818, where the media guidance applicationdivides (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a height of thedisplay area by the average height value to determine a number of rows.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from the display template, a value forthe height of the display area (e.g., 80 pixels). For example, the mediaguidance application may calculate (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) the number of rows of text in the given font that can bedisplayed (e.g., 2) by dividing the height of the display area (e.g., 80pixels) by the average height of a character of the font (e.g., 40pixels).

Process 800 continues to 820, where the media guidance applicationdivides (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a width of thedisplay area by the average width value to determine a number ofcolumns. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g.,via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), from the display template, a valuefor the width of the display area (e.g., 400 pixels). For example, themedia guidance application may calculate (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) the number of columns of text in the given font that canbe displayed (e.g., 20) by dividing the width of the display area (e.g.,400 pixels) by the average width of a character of the font (e.g., 20pixels).

Process 800 continues to 822, where the media guidance applicationmultiplies (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the number of rowsby the number of columns to determine the number of characters that fitin the display area. For example, the media guidance application maycalculate (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that the number ofcharacters that can fit in the display area is 40, based on multiplyingthe number of rows (e.g., 2) by the number of columns (e.g., 20).

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for selecting a set ofattributes from the plurality of attributes that fit in the displayarea, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Forexample, a media guidance application implementing process 900 may beexecuted by control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5). It should be noted thatprocess 900 or any step thereof could be performed on, or provided by,any of the devices shown in FIGS. 5-6. Process 900 starts at 902, wherethe media guidance application begins (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) a process for selecting a set of attributes from the pluralityof attributes that fit in the display area. For example, the mediaguidance application may initialize the necessary variables and execute(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a program script calling aparticular method to execute process 900.

Process 900 continues to 904, where the media guidance applicationretrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a highest rankedunretrieved attribute of a plurality of ranked attributes. For example,the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) from a stored data structure (e.g., in storage 508 (FIG.5) or remote at media guidance data source 618 accessible viacommunications network 614 (FIG. 6)) an identifier (e.g., a string ofcharacters defining the attribute, such as “Brad Pitt”). The mediaguidance application may execute (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a program script utilizing a for-loop to iteratively retrievesuccessive ranked attributes in the data structure (e.g., the highestranked is retrieved first, then the second highest, and so on).

Process 900 continues to 906, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a number ofcharacters of the retrieved attribute. For example, the media guidanceapplication may execute (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) aprogram script utilizing a library function (e.g., strlen(string) inC++) to return the number of characters in the string of text (e.g.,“Brad Pitt”) for the retrieved attribute.

Process 900 continues to 908, where the media guidance applicationcompares (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the number ofcharacters to an available number of characters in the display area. Forexample, the media guidance application may compare (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the number of characters of the retrievedattribute (e.g., 40 characters) and the number of characters availablein the display area (e.g., 50 characters) to determine whether thenumber of characters of the retrieved attribute is less than, greaterthan, or equal to the number of characters available in the displayarea.

Process 900 continues to 910, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) whether the numberof characters of the retrieved attribute is greater than the availablenumber of characters in the display area. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) whether the number of characters of the retrieved attribute(e.g., 40 characters) are greater than the number of charactersavailable in the display area (e.g., 50 characters) by comparing the twovalues (e.g., by comparing variables storing the values for the numberof characters to determine which is greater).

If, at 910, the media guidance application determines that the number ofcharacters of the retrieved attribute is not greater than the availablenumber of characters in the display area, process 900 continues to 912,where the media guidance application adds (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) the attribute to a selected attribute list. For example,the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that there is space (e.g., there are enoughcharacters available in the display area) to display the attribute ifthe number of characters is not greater than the number available in thedisplay area. As a specific example, the media guidance application maydetermine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that the attributecan be displayed if the attribute is 40 characters and the number ofcharacters available in the display area is 50. For example, the mediaguidance application may then add (e.g., write an identifier of theattribute) to a data structure (e.g., a list) storing attributes thatwill be displayed with the media asset identifier. The media guidanceapplication may then update (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5))the number of characters available in the display area by subtractingthe number of characters of the attribute (e.g., subtracting 40 from 50,thus 10 characters are still available). Process 900 then continues to914.

If, at 910, the media guidance application determines that the number ofcharacters of the retrieved attribute is greater than the availablenumber of characters in the display area, process 900 continues to 914,where the media guidance application determines (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) whether every attribute has been retrieved. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) whether every attribute has been retrieved whena for-loop iterating through every attribute (e.g., stored in a datastructure) terminates. The media guidance application may alternativelyor additionally determine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5))whether every attribute has been retrieved based on storing anidentifier of each attribute that has been retrieved in a list or otherdata structure and comparing the list or other data structure to thedata structure with every attribute associated with the media asset.

If, at 914, the media guidance application determines that not everyattribute has been retrieved, process 900 returns to 904, where themedia guidance application retrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) a highest ranked unretrieved attribute of a plurality ofranked attributes. For example, the media guidance application maydetermine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that an attributehas not yet been retrieved, as described above with respect to 914. Themedia guidance application may then retrieve the attribute (e.g., thenext highest ranked since the plurality of ranked attributes is ordered)until every attribute is retrieved and the number of characters of theattribute is determined. In this way, the media guidance application mayensure that the display area is filled by checking (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) every associated attribute with the media assetto see if it fits in the display area (e.g., based on the number ofcharacters).

If, at 914, the media guidance application determines that everyattribute has been retrieved, process 900 returns to 916, where themedia guidance application determines (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) the selected attribute list is the set of attributes that fitin the display area. For example, upon determining that there are nomore attributes to check, the media guidance application may generate(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) for display the media assetidentifier with the selected attributes (e.g., the attributes added to alist of selected attributes as described above). In some embodiments,the media guidance application may cease (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) checking attributes to determine whether they fit in thedisplay area if the number of characters available in the display areais zero.

FIG. 10 is another flowchart of illustrative steps for presentingtargeted metadata with media asset identifiers, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. For example, a media guidance applicationimplementing process 1000 may be executed by control circuitry 504 (FIG.5). It should be noted that process 1000 or any step thereof could beperformed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS. 5-6.

Process 1000 begins with 1002, where the media guidance applicationretrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a plurality ofattributes associated with a media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) the plurality of attributes from local storage (e.g., storage 508(FIG. 5)) or a remote server (e.g., from media guidance data source 618via communications network 614 (FIG. 6)). For example, the mediaguidance application may transmit (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a query including an identifier of the media asset to a databaseincluding a plurality of attributes associated with media assets. Basedon the transmitted query, the media guidance application may receive(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset (e.g., in a list or other datastructure). As a specific example, the database may contain a pluralityof tables, where each table is associated with a media asset, and eachrow of each table contains an attribute associated with the media asset.The row may also include a type of each attribute in another associatedfield (e.g., “actor”). The identifier of the media asset may be anycombination of characters that are unique to the media asset. Forexample, the identifier may be the title of the media asset, or a numberassigned by a content provider (e.g., content source 610 (FIG. 6)).

Process 1000 continues to 1004, where the media guidance applicationgenerates (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a score for eachattribute of the plurality of attributes based on a context and a userpreference for the respective attribute of the plurality of attributes.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a list or other data structure with aplurality of fields for the plurality of attributes each with associatedfields for the context and the user preference. The media guidanceapplication may process (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) thelist or other data structure (e.g., by reading in strings of text orvalues corresponding to the context and the user preference for eachattribute). The media guidance application may then assign (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a context value based on an algorithmmapping the context value and the user weighting for each attribute to anumerical score. For example, if the date is December 10^(th), whichcorresponds to a context of Christmas time and an attribute of a mediaasset is that it is a “Christmas movie,” the media guidance applicationmay assign (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a higher score tothe “Christmas movie” attribute than it would at a different time ofyear (e.g., Summer). The media guidance application may similarly assign(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a user weighting based on theuser preference. For example, the media guidance application may assign(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a greater user weighting toan attribute (e.g., “Seth Rogen”) that matches a user preference thanone that does not. For example, the exact value of the user weightingmay depend on a relative amount that the user likes the attribute (e.g.,a stored user preference for an attribute of 5/10 may correspond to alower weighting than 8/10). For example, the media guidance applicationmay combine (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the userweighting and the context value to generate a single composite score foreach attribute. As a specific example, if the scores are based on a tenpoint scale, and the context value is 4 and the user weighting is 4, themedia guidance application may calculate (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) a value of 8.

Process 1000 continues to 1006, where the media guidance applicationranks (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the plurality ofattributes based on the score for each attribute. For example, the mediaguidance application may store (e.g., in storage 508 (FIG. 5) orremotely at media guidance data source 618 accessible via communicationsnetwork 614 (FIG. 6)) the calculated score for each attribute as well asan identifier of each attribute in a data structure. The data structuremay be a list, array, or other data structure suitable for storing thecalculated scores for each attribute. The media guidance application maythen sort (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) and order theattributes based on their associated scores. For example, the mediaguidance application may execute (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) a program script utilizing a bubble sort, merge sort, or othersuitable sorting algorithm to order the attributes from highest score tolowest score.

Process 1000 continues to 1008, where the media guidance applicationdetermines (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5), based on a displaysize of a media asset identifier associated with the media asset, anumber of characters that fit in a display area. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG.5)) from a field of a display template corresponding to a display to bedisplayed (e.g., a grid-guide) that a particular object (e.g., a cell)corresponding to the media asset identifier can fit a particular numberof characters (e.g., 100 characters). Alternatively or additionally, themedia guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) the number of characters based on a font type (e.g., TimesNew Roman) to be displayed with the media asset identifier. For example,the media guidance application may access (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) a database (e.g., in storage 508 (FIG. 5) or remotely atmedia guidance data source 618 accessible via communications network 614(FIG. 6)) that stores adjustments to a stored number of defaultcharacters stored in the field of the display template (e.g., 100characters). For example, the media guidance application may determine(e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that a particular font typeis 10% smaller, so 10% more characters can fit in the display area.

Process 1000 continues to 1010, where the media guidance applicationselects (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)), based on theranking, a set of attributes from the plurality of attributes, whereinthe number of characters in the set does not exceed the determinednumber of characters. For example, the media guidance application mayinitialize (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) a counter for thenumber of characters of attributes that are currently selected andincrement the counter based on the number of characters in eachattribute that is selected. As a specific example, the media guidanceapplication may select (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) thehighest ranked attribute, which may have 30 characters, and set thecounter to 30. The media guidance application may then select (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) the next highest rated attribute andupdate the counter by adding the number of characters of the nexthighest rated attribute and so on until the counter exceeds thedetermined number of characters that fit in the display area. Forexample, once the media guidance application determines (e.g., viacontrol circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) that an nth retrieved attribute exceedsthe determined number of characters that fit in the display area, themedia guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry504 (FIG. 5)) that the nth-1 retrieved attribute is the last attributethat fits in the display area.

Process 1000 continues to 1012, where the media guidance applicationgenerates (e.g., via control circuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) for display themedia asset identifier with the set of attributes. For example, themedia guidance application may generate (e.g., via control circuitry 504(FIG. 5)) identifiers of the attributes (e.g., strings of characters)for display (e.g., on display 512 (FIG. 5)) in a particular section ofthe display corresponding to the media asset identifier. As a specificexample, the media guidance application may generate (e.g., via controlcircuitry 504 (FIG. 5)) for display (e.g., on display 512 (FIG. 5)) acell in a grid guide corresponding to the media asset identifier, wherethe attributes (e.g., title, genre, etc.) that were selected based ontheir ranking are displayed.

It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of each of FIGS. 7-10may be used with any other embodiment of this disclosure. In addition,the steps and descriptions described in relation to FIGS. 7-10 may bedone in alternative orders or in parallel to further the purposes ofthis disclosure. For example, each of these steps may be performed inany order or in parallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lagor increase the speed of the system or method. Furthermore, it should benoted that any of the devices or equipment discussed in relation toFIGS. 5-6 could be used to perform one or more of the steps in FIGS.7-10.

While some portions of this disclosure may make reference to“convention,” any such reference is merely for the purpose of providingcontext to the invention(s) of the instant disclosure, and does not formany admission as to what constitutes the state of the art.

The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and notlimiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of theprocesses discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/orrearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departingfrom the scope of the invention. More generally, the above disclosure ismeant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that follow aremeant to set bounds as to what the present invention includes.Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitationsdescribed in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodimentherein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may becombined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done indifferent orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems andmethods described herein may be performed in real time. It should alsobe noted that the systems and/or methods described above may be appliedto, or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for presenting targeted metadata withmedia asset identifiers, the method comprising: retrieving a pluralityof attributes associated with a media asset; generating a score for eachattribute of the plurality of attributes by: determining, based on acurrent time and a location of a user, a context for each attribute;determining, from a user profile associated with the user, a userpreference for each attribute; assigning both (1) a context value toeach attribute based on the context and (2) a user weighting to eachattribute based on the user preference; and calculating the score basedon the context value for each attribute and the user weighting for eachattribute; ranking the plurality of attributes based on the score foreach attribute; determining a display size of a media asset identifierassociated with the media asset; based on the display size, determininga number of characters that fit in a display area; selecting, based onthe ranking, a set of attributes from the plurality of attributes,wherein the total number of characters in the set does not exceed thedetermined number of characters that fit in the display area; andgenerating for display the media asset identifier with the set ofattributes.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining, based on thecurrent time and the location of the user, the context for eachattribute comprises: identifying, from a data structure, a plurality oftopics corresponding to the current time and the location; comparingeach attribute to each topic of the plurality of topics received fromthe social media website; identifying, based on the comparing, that afirst subset of the plurality of attributes associated with the mediaasset each correspond to a respective topic of the plurality of topics;and determining the context for each attribute in the first subset basedon the corresponding topic of the plurality of topics.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein determining, based on the current time and the locationof the user, the context for each attribute comprises: comparing thecurrent time and the location of the user to a plurality of currenttimes and locations stored in a database; determining that the currenttime and location of the user matches a stored time and a storedlocation in the database; retrieving, from a field associated with thematched stored time and the matched stored location, a context mappingfor attributes; processing each attribute of the plurality of attributesassociated with the media asset with the context mapping for attributes;and determining the context for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes based on output of the context mapping.
 4. The method ofclaim 1, wherein determining, from the user profile associated with theuser, the user preference for each attribute comprises: retrieving theuser profile; retrieving user preferences for the user from the userprofile; comparing each attribute to each user preference of the userpreferences; identifying, based on comparing each attribute to each userpreference of the user preferences, that a second subset of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset each correspondto a respective user preference of the user preferences; and determiningthe user preference for each attribute in the second subset based on thecorresponding user preference of the user preferences.
 5. The method ofclaim 1, wherein calculating the score based on the context value foreach attribute and the user weighting for each attribute comprises:retrieving a data structure with default scores for the plurality ofattributes associated with the media asset; retrieving, from a fieldcorresponding to each attribute of the plurality of attributes, adefault score for each attribute; and adjusting the default score foreach attribute based on the context value and the user weighting.
 6. Themethod of claim 1, wherein determining the display size of the mediaasset identifier associated with the media asset comprises: receiving auser input corresponding to a request to generate a display with themedia asset identifier; retrieving a display template that correspondsto the user request, wherein the display template includes a pluralityof display sizes associated with objects to be displayed; determiningthat the media asset identifier associated with the media assetcorresponds to a first object to be displayed; and retrieving, from thedisplay template, the display size associated with the first object tobe displayed.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the numberof characters that fit in the display area comprises: determining a fonttype to be displayed in the display area; retrieving an averagecharacter size for the font type; comparing the average character sizeto the display size of the media asset identifier; and based oncomparing the average character size to the display size, determiningthe number of characters that fit in the display area.
 8. The method ofclaim 1, wherein selecting, based on the ranking, the set of attributesfrom the plurality of attributes comprises: retrieving, from the userprofile, a user display rating for each attribute type of a plurality ofattribute types; and maximizing a total user display rating ofattributes that are displayed by: determining an attribute type for eachattribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the mediaasset; determining a user display rating for each attribute of theplurality of attributes based on the respective attribute type;identifying attributes of the plurality of attributes that maximize thetotal user display rating by processing the ranked plurality ofattributes with a model including both (1) the user display rating and(2) a number of characters of each attribute of the plurality ofattributes; and selecting the identified attributes as the set ofattributes.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting, based on theranking, the set of attributes from the plurality of attributescomprises: determining, based on a number of characters of a firstattribute of the ranked plurality of attributes, that the firstattribute will be displayed; determining, based on a number ofcharacters of a second attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes,that the second attribute will not be displayed; calculating adifference between a first score of the first attribute and a secondscore of the second attribute; determining whether the difference isbelow a threshold difference; and in response to determining that thedifference is below the threshold difference, adjusting a fontassociated with the display area, wherein both the first attribute andthe second attribute fit in the display area when generated for displayin the adjusted font.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein generating fordisplay the media asset identifier with the set of attributes comprises:determining a first attribute of the set of attributes with a highestscore; and generating for display the first attribute visuallydistinguished from other attributes in the set of attributes.
 11. Asystem for presenting targeted metadata with media asset identifiers,the system comprising: storage circuitry configured to store a userprofile associated with a user; and control circuitry configured to:retrieve a plurality of attributes associated with a media asset;generate a score for each attribute of the plurality of attributes by:determining, based on a current time and a location of the user, acontext for each attribute; determining, from the user profileassociated with the user, a user preference for each attribute;assigning both (1) a context value to each attribute based on thecontext and (2) a user weighting to each attribute based on the userpreference; and calculating the score based on the context value foreach attribute and the user weighting for each attribute; rank theplurality of attributes based on the score for each attribute; determinea display size of a media asset identifier associated with the mediaasset; based on the display size, determine a number of characters thatfit in a display area; select, based on the ranking, a set of attributesfrom the plurality of attributes, wherein the total number of charactersin the set does not exceed the determined number of characters that fitin the display area; and generate for display the media asset identifierwith the set of attributes.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein thecontrol circuitry is further configured, when determining, based on thecurrent time and the location of the user, the context for eachattribute, to: identify, from a data structure, a plurality of topicscorresponding to the current time and the location; compare eachattribute to each topic of the plurality of topics received from thesocial media website; identify, based on the comparing, that a firstsubset of the plurality of attributes associated with the media asseteach correspond to a respective topic of the plurality of topics; anddetermine the context for each attribute in the first subset based onthe corresponding topic of the plurality of topics.
 13. The system ofclaim 11, wherein the control circuitry is further configured, whendetermining, based on the current time and the location of the user, thecontext for each attribute, to: compare the current time and thelocation of the user to a plurality of current times and locationsstored in a database; determine that the current time and location ofthe user matches a stored time and a stored location in the database;retrieve, from a field associated with the matched stored time and thematched stored location, a context mapping for attributes; process eachattribute of the plurality of attributes associated with the media assetwith the context mapping for attributes; and determine the context foreach attribute of the plurality of attributes based on output of thecontext mapping.
 14. The system of claim 11, wherein the controlcircuitry is further configured, when determining, from the user profileassociated with the user, the user preference for each attribute, to:retrieve the user profile; retrieve user preferences for the user fromthe user profile; compare each attribute to each user preference of theuser preferences; identify, based on comparing each attribute to eachuser preference of the user preferences, that a second subset of theplurality of attributes associated with the media asset each correspondto a respective user preference of the user preferences; and determinethe user preference for each attribute in the second subset based on thecorresponding user preference of the user preferences.
 15. The system ofclaim 11, wherein the control circuitry is further configured, whencalculating the score based on the context value for each attribute andthe user weighting for each attribute, to: retrieve a data structurewith default scores for the plurality of attributes associated with themedia asset; retrieve, from a field corresponding to each attribute ofthe plurality of attributes, a default score for each attribute; andadjust the default score for each attribute based on the context valueand the user weighting.
 16. The system of claim 11, wherein the controlcircuitry is further configured, when determining the display size ofthe media asset identifier associated with the media asset, to: receivea user input corresponding to a request to generate a display with themedia asset identifier; retrieve a display template that corresponds tothe user request, wherein the display template includes a plurality ofdisplay sizes associated with objects to be displayed; determine thatthe media asset identifier associated with the media asset correspondsto a first object to be displayed; and retrieve, from the displaytemplate, the display size associated with the first object to bedisplayed.
 17. The system of claim 11, wherein the control circuitry isfurther configured, when determining the number of characters that fitin the display area, to: determine a font type to be displayed in thedisplay area; retrieve an average character size for the font type;compare the average character size to the display size of the mediaasset identifier; and based on comparing the average character size tothe display size, determine the number of characters that fit in thedisplay area.
 18. The system of claim 11, wherein the control circuitryis further configured, when selecting, based on the ranking, the set ofattributes from the plurality of attributes, to: retrieve, from the userprofile, a user display rating for each attribute type of a plurality ofattribute types; and maximize a total user display rating of attributesthat are displayed by: determining an attribute type for each attributeof the plurality of attributes associated with the media asset;determining a user display rating for each attribute of the plurality ofattributes based on the respective attribute type; identifyingattributes of the plurality of attributes that maximize the total userdisplay rating by processing the ranked plurality of attributes with amodel including both (1) the user display rating and (2) a number ofcharacters of each attribute of the plurality of attributes; andselecting the identified attributes as the set of attributes.
 19. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein the control circuitry is further configured,when selecting, based on the ranking, the set of attributes from theplurality of attributes, to: determine, based on a number of charactersof a first attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes, that thefirst attribute will be displayed; determine, based on a number ofcharacters of a second attribute of the ranked plurality of attributes,that the second attribute will not be displayed; calculate a differencebetween a first score of the first attribute and a second score of thesecond attribute; determine whether the difference is below a thresholddifference; and in response to determining that the difference is belowthe threshold difference, adjust a font associated with the displayarea, wherein both the first attribute and the second attribute fit inthe display area when generated for display in the adjusted font. 20.The system of claim 11, wherein the control circuitry is furtherconfigured, when generating for display the media asset identifier withthe set of attributes, to: determine a first attribute of the set ofattributes with a highest score; and generate for display the firstattribute visually distinguished from other attributes in the set ofattributes.